


An Involved Process

by bomberqueen17



Series: Trust [8]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Addressing That Awful W3 Gameplay Video Of Keira That Youtube's Algorithm Won't Stop Recommending, Aiden Lives (The Witcher), Canon-Typical Violence, Competent Aiden, Developing Relationship, Empress Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, Eye Trauma, Impalement, Intersex Character, Nonbinary Character, OT3, Other, Past Abuse, The Witcher 3 Spoilers, Traumatic Injury, non-graphically-described but it's unmistakable, they all take turns being the damsel in distress, they all take turns with the one braincell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:02:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28876890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: After a few more rounds of our three brave heroes taking turns holding the sole braincell, we get on with the Action Plot to bring this whole mess toward some kind of resolution.
Relationships: Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher), Aiden/Lambert/Keira Metz, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Lambert/Keira Metz
Series: Trust [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048918
Comments: 586
Kudos: 294





	1. Chapter 1

Grinning, Ciri grabbed Geralt by the wrist and yanked, and he stumbled after her through several hundred miles of instantaneous nothing. He reeled against her as they came to rest alongside a path in a nice bit of woods, and Ciri laughed brightly and shoved him back upright; she’d meant to hit the path directly, but she’d missed by a few feet. 

“That doesn’t get easier,” Geralt said, brushing himself off and preening himself like a cat whose dignity has been wounded by being scooped up and moved. 

“Hush,” Ciri said, “you’re fine.”

“At least we didn’t land in water,” Geralt said, and delicately picked his way through the undergrowth to get onto the path. Ciri followed him, letting him break trail. 

“I’m good at it, by now,” she said. No amount of grumbling could hurt her mood; this was a rare day of freedom, and not only was she going to spend it with her favorite person, she was also going to get to see her uncle. 

“Mm,” he said, noncommittal, but he was saying it to make her laugh, and when she did, his face twitched into a half-smile as well, while he pretended that wasn’t happening. He was happy to be here, too. 

She was a little nervous. Keira hadn’t sent the promised message about having asked about Ciri visiting to meet Aiden; when Ciri had asked, Keira’s response had been very odd. It seemed the mage was finding current events rather stressful; she didn’t seem terribly coherent, and said she’d forgotten to ask, which didn’t seem very typical for her. She’d seemed very distressed, but had said Aiden seemed not to be afraid, and would likely be up to a visit, and then had apologized profusely for forgetting to ask. It had taken Ciri another couple of days to get the time free, but here she was, at last.

“Do you reckon,” Ciri said to Geralt, “that Philippa’s got some sort of… hold, over Keira?”

“Hold,” Geralt said.

“Like,” Ciri said, “has she got her pet dog in a cage or something. Is she blackmailing her?”

“I think it’s just that she wants Philippa to help her fix Aiden’s eye,” Geralt said thoughtfully, shaking out his arms as if he were only now expanding to his full size, outside the constraints of the palace walls. He did look bigger here, taller and more easy. Certainly he looked more at-ease, dressed for the Path, with both his swords and a battered but well-maintained gambeson, and a high-quality but rugged wool hooded scarf arranged attractively around his shoulders. It was like he’d dressed _up_ for the Path, and it was adorable. He wouldn’t take anything fancy, or anything too-much, from her or from Emhyr, but he was also clearly enjoying not looking like a beggar, for once, and having everything be clean and in good repair.

“I mean,” Ciri said, “that’s not really Keira’s problem. Obviously I’d take care of it if she weren’t, and that would mean I’d have to go to Philippa or find some other way, but at this point I have so much leverage over so many people I’m really not that worried about it. I’m half-considering approaching Philippa directly, but I don’t want to cut Keira out if she’s getting something out of this.”

“Or if Phil’s got some leverage on her,” Geralt mused. He sniffed. “Should find out.”

“Maybe she’d tell you,” Ciri said. “I don’t think I could get it out of her.”

“Out of Phil? Certainly you couldn’t,” Geralt said. 

“I was thinking you should ask Keira,” Ciri said. 

“Mm,” Geralt said thoughtfully. 

“Don’t fuck her again though!” Ciri said. “The last thing this situation needs is your-- input,” and then she had to giggle. Geralt groaned and rolled his eyes. 

“Don’t talk about my _input_ ,” he said. “No, not only would Yennefer kill me, justifiably-- last time was within the rules but to do it again would be pretty clearly against them-- but I don’t think Keira would go for it, at this point.”

“You had better not try it,” Ciri warned. 

Geralt shook his head. They could see the house, now. Someone was outside in the fenced-in yard, a man, fair-haired, tall, broad-shouldered but slim-built. He was by the woodshed-- ah, he was splitting wood. From the pile, he’d been at it a while. He set a log on the stump, pushed the wedge in, and brought the maul down with a graceful stroke, making it look so easy that the log seemed to fly apart on its own. 

He didn’t particularly look like a Witcher, but from the strength of that blow, Ciri knew he was. “That has to be Aiden,” she said. 

“Mm,” Geralt said. “It is.” Ah, they were downwind; he’d probably caught the other Witcher’s scent before they’d even come into view.

There were a pair of horses turned out in the paddock adjacent to the garden, who clearly had been amusing themselves with grazing down the brush that had come up in the turnout pen. One of them spotted Ciri and Geralt and nickered, pricking her ears at them in interest. Aiden reacted immediately, looking at the horse and then looking beyond to pick them out easily on the pathway. 

Ciri raised her hand and waved to him, and he waved back, setting the maul down and walking over to the house’s door. She thought he’d go inside and stay there, but he just opened the door, leaned through it for a moment, and then came back out, wiping his face on his arm and coming to stand at the garden gate. 

The house door opened and Lambert came out, in the midst of pulling off an apron over his head, looking alertly around. Ciri leapt in delight when she saw him. “Lambert!” she called out.

“Ha,” he cried, and came running down the path toward her. She ran towards him in return, and they met just past the gate, a few feet away from where Aiden was standing.

She jumped and Lambert caught her, like all the Wolves had when she was a kid, and he swung her around and laughed and she wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a big soppy kiss on his cheek. 

“Eugh, you’re so gross,” he said, shoving her, and she giggled and stole his apron.

“This is so pretty!” she said, admiring the embroidery on it.

“I been leaning into my housewife tendencies,” he said, and held her by one shoulder at arm’s length to look her up and down. She was dressed simply enough, almost suitable for the Path, but of course everything she owned was of fine make now; her white shirt had a delicate linen camisole underneath and the outer shirt was woven of a blend of silk and wool fibers and her jacket was trimmed in exquisite fur and had delicate metal-thread embroidery and all her leather was finely-tooled and so on and so forth. “You, though.”

“I’ve been leaning into my brat tendencies,” she said, a bit glumly. 

Lambert let go of her shoulder and chucked her cheek gently, and his expression was softer than she’d expected. “You look good, though.” His mouth twisted. “Eyeliner looks pretty good too. They got you the expensive mascara.”

“It’s really good stuff,” she admitted. “Doesn’t smudge for anything. I’ll get you some.”

He grinned as she gave him back his apron. “C’mon, you gotta meet Aiden.”

Aiden was leaning against the gate. He was tall, fair-skinned and light of coloring, cheeks red with cold and exertion. He had a kerchief wrapped at an angle around his head, covering one of his eyes. He was built lanky, long-limbed and thin, but with powerful shoulders; Ciri wouldn’t like to have to face him with a sword, not with a reach and build like that. He was probably fast as _shit_. He had his arms crossed over his chest and was watching Ciri and Lambert with interest. 

“Ciri, this is Aiden,” Lambert said. 

“I am so delighted to meet you, finally,” she said. 

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Aiden said, and made her a cute little courtesy, hand on his chest. “Not least that you’re in charge of everything now. Not bad.”

She laughed. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said. 

Geralt had caught up to her and was standing next to her now. “Aiden,” he said.

“Geralt,” Aiden said, and reached over to clasp his hand in greeting.

“You know each other?” Lambert asked.

“We met briefly,” Geralt said. “Years ago. I didn’t know then that you knew him.” 

“I might not’ve yet,” Aiden said. “Depends on the year.”

“Don’t recall,” Geralt said, “I just know you look familiar.”

“You didn’t fuck, did you?” Lambert asked warily. 

Ciri threw her head back at that and really laughed, like she hadn’t in ages. “That would just be the perfect capper to all of this,” she said.

Aiden quirked his eyebrows suggestively at Geralt, and Geralt laughed too. “If only we’d thought to get our stories straight before this,” he said.

“Oh, Lambert,” Aiden said, in exaggerated tones, “of course I never-- I have never seen this person before in my life, let alone had a sordid encounter with him out back of a tavern in Novigrad thirty-five years ago.”

“Wait,” Geralt said, frowning, “was that _you_?” but he wasn’t a fantastic actor and Ciri could make out the mischievous twinkle in his eye. 

“Fuck you,” Lambert howled, laughing, and punched Geralt, and then they embraced rather violently and then Lambert hauled him inside and they all went into the house. 

“I don’t suck a _lot_ of dicks out behind taverns in particular neighborhoods in Novigrad,” Aiden said, pulling off the kerchief and wiping his face unselfconsciously with it, “but that’s not to say I’ve sucked _no_ dicks out behind taverns in particular neighborhoods in Novigrad, over the course of my long and checkered career.”

“Hey now,” Lambert said, with a glance at Ciri and a glance at Geralt, but then he said, “Oh, you’re a grown woman, can we talk about stuff like that now?”

“It never _really_ stopped you before, now did it?” Geralt said, sounding a little peevish. 

“The number of dicks _I_ have sucked out behind taverns _anywhere_ in Novigrad _is_ none,” Ciri said, with great precision. 

“That’s at least partly because you’ve never spent much time in Novigrad,” Lambert pointed out.

Ciri held up her hand, one finger extended. “A technical victory is a victory nonetheless,” she said, “but that is also not the only reason.”

“I’ve never sucked any dicks out behind taverns _anywhere_ ,” Lambert said. 

“This is a lie,” Aiden said.

“It is not a lie,” Lambert said. “I mean, unless you’re expanding _out behind a tavern_ to include, like, being within a several-block radius of a tavern.”

“For the record,” Ciri said, “the number of dicks I have sucked, full stop, is none.”

“I don’t know if I ought to be glad to hear that,” Geralt said mildly, “but for some reason I am?”

“It’s because you’re bent,” Lambert said, rather proudly. 

Ciri stuck her tongue out gleefully and pointed at him. “It’s not that I have no use for a man at all,” she said, “but generally they’re of limited utility. I’m going to have to marry one, I think.” She made a face. 

“They’re not all bad,” Lambert said. 

“I don’t know,” Aiden said, “I don’t know any good ones.”

“Have you got, like, a list of finalists?” Lambert asked.

Ciri sighed. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, don’t look like that. I got to veto a couple of them. I’ve known since I was about eight that I was going to have to marry some horrible blue-blooded carp-faced idiot, _and_ either make a baby with him or convincingly steal one. As long as I get to pick one that I can push around but who isn’t a complete spineless waste of space, and who doesn’t mind where I get my kicks as long as I’m discreet about it--”

“Convenient,” Lambert said, “that you like women and a woman’s not going to get you pregnant.”

“My point exactly,” she said. 

“Got a steady girlfriend yet, then?” Lambert asked. His face lit up. “Ooh, or a harem?”

Ciri bit her lip, tilting her head a little. She hadn’t mentioned it to Geralt yet, really. “Not… quite,” she said. “Still working on it.”

Geralt frowned, and then his eyebrows went up, and then he looked satisfied with himself, so she figured he had probably done the math on which of her companions showed her the most attention. They were being discreet in their very subtle courtship, but he was a pretty keen observer.

“The harem, obviously,” Lambert said, and she laughed.

“That’s enough about me,” Ciri said. “Now.” She set her rucksack down, and pulled out the large bottle of extremely fine spirits she’d brought. “You’ve come back from the dead, Aiden, so we need to drink about that.”

“You know,” Aiden said, looking appreciatively at the bottle, “that is one thing we haven’t done yet.”

Lambert was already collecting drinkware from the cupboard. “Ah, we haven’t anything nice,” he said critically, eyeing the mismatched ceramic and wooden cups.

“You shack up with a sorceress for a bare season,” Aiden said, “and suddenly you’re spoiled rotten about housewares.”

“Well,” Lambert said. 

Ciri was already pouring into the assorted cups. “Is Keira still giving Aiden space, then?” she asked, though she knew fine well that was the case. Better to make them say it. Maybe they understood Keira’s motivations better than she did. 

Lambert gave her a look of astonishing misery. “I don’t know,” he said quietly, all the animation gone from his face. He breathed in, and let it out. “I don’t know where she is or if she’ll come back or what’s going on.” He gave Ciri a beseeching look. “Have you heard from her? What’s she doing? What’s happening?”

Ciri paused in her pouring and gave him a long look. She’d thought there might be genuine feeling between the two of them. And, with the precedent of Geralt and Yennefer and Jaskier, for all these years, it stood to reason Lambert might just have assumed that adding Aiden back into the mix would cause no problems. But if Keira wasn’t willing to be part of an arrangement like that, then it just wasn’t going to work out. This didn’t sound like they’d negotiated it and failed, however; it sounded more like they’d all come into it with various assumptions and hadn’t reconciled them.

Ciri was twenty years old and her sole serious sexual relationship to date had been based on some very unhealthy foundations and had ended in violent bereavement, so it wasn’t as though she were terribly qualified to give advice to a century-old not-human who she knew was somewhere not quite within the bounds of the genders most people sort of assumed to exist. But, she also had spent a lot of time figuring out how people related to one another. Meddling wasn’t her modus operandi, as a rule, but possibly she could involve herself in this. 

She noticed that Aiden was standing a little ways behind Lambert, looking-- guilty. That was what it was, he looked guilty. Possibly, he had fucked things up with Keira accidentally, but there was a chance he’d done it on purpose, and whether he had intended it or not, he certainly couldn’t fail to realize how distressed Lambert was about it.

Well, she’d have to suss all that out, at some point. At the very least, she could bring them up to speed on current events. They were Witchers, after all; they might just figure it out on their own, though probably in the most self-destructive and upsetting way possible. She sighed, resumed her pouring, and set to explaining how she’d set up megascope meetings of the former members of the Lodge of Sorceresses, at Keira’s behest.

She paused, though, as she finished pouring and distributed the cups. “For the present,” she said, “let's pause for a belated welcoming of Aiden back to the family, such as it is.”

He grinned in surprise, touched, and they all drank to that.

“So,” Aiden said, surprising her by being the keenest to get the conversation back on track. “Keira came to you to confess to the murder that freed me, and used that as an excuse to petition for the potentially mentioned pardon for the Lodge members.”

“Briefly, yes,” Ciri said. Geralt had settled next to Lambert on the bench along the kitchen wall, and Aiden was folded sort of sidewaysish into a chair with his elbows and knees sticking out in a way that looked uncomfortable but he was probably used to, so she sat cross-legged on the kitchen table since that was the most central location where she didn’t have to have her back to anyone or the door, and because she could, because no one here was going to judge her court manners or shout at her for having her shoes on the furniture. “The thing I think is very interesting is that she’s very conscientiously not trying to use this to secure any particular power for herself. Obviously the personal favor she did me by fighting on my behalf against the Wild Hunt cancels out the personal wrong she did me previously, along with the rest of the Lodge, what with the whole attempting to force me to conceive a child at fifteen, among assorted other bullshit.”

“Wait,” Aiden said, “what,” and Ciri made Geralt tell the story so she had time to finish her drink and pour new ones all around. 

“We need to dilute this with something,” Lambert said, and produced a plate of little meat-stuffed dumpling-type roll thingies he’d clearly made, and a pitcher of water.

“You weren’t kidding about your housewife tendencies,” Ciri said, impressed. He was right, though; she had the afternoon free, but she did have to get back tonight, and if she was too drunk to portal she’d be in trouble. On her own, she’d probably be willing to give it a go and see how it went, but she wasn’t about to haul Geralt through dimensions unknown and possibly wind up having to fight cosmic forces with a hangover _and_ his sarcasm.

Aiden dragged them back on topic again. “So wait, so the whole Lodge did this,” he said, “and Keira was a member of the Lodge so she was complicit, but then she came and risked her life fighting for you, so the two of you are square, you figure.”

“Right,” Ciri said.

“So she’s trading on this to get the whole Lodge pardoned,” Aiden said. 

“Well,” Ciri said, “not entirely, there are some other factors that have-- well, mostly, yes. I mean, I’m not going to hold personal grudges, and I acknowledge that while the sorceresses are dangerous, they’re also somewhat justified in some of their historical positions. I’m coming into,” and she gestured circularly, “all of this with the general notion that people want to be able to survive and the more of them I can make that possible for, the happier overall the reign will be, and so on and so forth, and naturally people are going to have competing needs but persecution of mages has been rather an issue for some time, and it stands to reason they’d be anxious to secure some real temporal power in order to keep that to a, you know, minimum.”

“Keira keeps pointing out that all her friends are dead,” Lambert mused.

“Well, and she’s not wrong,” Ciri said, “which is why-- well, I admit I was willing to write off Philippa Eilheart as probably an irredeemable enemy, but Keira has been really putting herself out to include Philippa in these goings-on, and so possibly despite my better judgement I’ve been having to allow Philippa into the councils. I’m willing to admit that Keira might be correct in this; Philippa’s a dangerous creature and holds nothing higher than her own self-interest, but on the other hand, she is several hundred years old and has seen a great deal of history unfolding and possibly is not incorrect to draw from this the lesson that the only person who can be relied upon is herself.”

“She’s not entirely wrong,” Geralt allowed, “but also, you can’t trust her, at _all_.” 

“Moreover, I _do_ owe her something of a debt, regime-wise,” Ciri said, “given that she was the one to assassinate Radovid, which very clearly left the way clear for the conquest of the remaining Northlands by Emhyr, and so on and so forth.” She waved a hand vaguely. “What my own feelings are on all of that are moot; it is a fait accompli, but it behooves me to be aware of what was sacrificed and so on and so forth. So to be perfectly clear, if my feelings on Philippa were not already somewhat ambiguous, Keira’s intercession on her behalf would have been ineffective. So I shan’t lay it all at her feet, whether it go well or ill.”

“Phew,” Lambert said, “girl, you have been in a palace in Nilfgaard for too long.”

“No, shut up,” Aiden said, with genuine intensity, “I need to hear this. You know I was in a fucking basement for three fucking years, I have no idea what the fuck is going on.”

Ciri laughed. “Well, as it happens, I do, and have done almost nothing else for the last several months but discover in ever-greater depth and detail precisely what is going on at all times everywhere.”

“That sounds exhausting,” Lambert said.

“It is,” she said, “it is, but-- here’s the thing. Tempting as it is to run off and just get on the Path and hit things with swords, I was born and raised for _this_ ,” and she jabbed her index finger down into her other palm for emphasis. “If I am capable, I could do a lot more good than just killing occasional monsters until someone, probably a human and probably for petty political reasons, finally gets the jump on me.”

Lambert sighed heavily. “Fair point,” he said glumly. 

“So,” Ciri said, getting the meeting back on track as she was by now well-trained to do, “the crucial thing here is to point out that Keira and Philippa are _not_ friends. So why is Keira so concerned with ensuring Philippa’s involvement?”

“Uh,” Aiden said. “My eye, she said.” And he tapped his cheek below the eye he’d had covered with the bandana. It was, in fact, a gemstone of some sort, faceted and polished, and it looked uncomfortable. “And I didn’t ask her to do that, is the thing, but when I tried to talk to her she got upset. To be fair I didn’t start there, so it was something else she got upset about, but the fact remains.”

“Is it--” Ciri said, frowning. “Do you not want it fixed? She indicated that it was painful.”

Aiden sighed. “It _is_ ,” he said. “I don’t like it. But it works. Here’s the thing-- _nobody_ has asked me yet what it is that I want, least of all Keira.” He patted his chest. “But she gave me a bag full of agates I have to wear against my chest, so I’m doing that, for whatever it’s worth. I absolutely don’t want some sociopathic harpy to get installed in a position of power in your regime exclusively because of her expertise in ocular prosthetics, though.”

“Ohh those were big words,” Lambert said. 

“Listen, I read sometimes,” Aiden said. “I know my greatest gift to this world is my looks but sometimes a fellow has to branch out.”

“Well,” Ciri said, “the thing is, between all of the people I’m nominally in charge of, I’m sure we can find someone who can at least improve that eye so it doesn’t hurt.” She frowned. “Does it hurt now?”

“It’s not bad,” he said. “Keira gave me some thing I can wash it out with, and-- oh, did all of you know that it’s possible to teach Witchers new Signs?”

“New… what?” Geralt sat up straighter. 

Aiden pointed at Lambert. “Keira taught Lambert how to cast a new Sign,” he said. 

Lambert colored slightly under their regard. “It’s a-- something about spell structures,” he said. “She figured out how to make a healing cantrip fit into a Sign-like spell structure and then taught me how to use it.” 

“What,” Geralt said. 

“Yeah so Lambert casts that on me once or twice a day and it takes the headache down to where I can manage it,” Aiden said. 

“A healing cantrip,” Ciri said.

“Show me,” Geralt said, turning to Lambert sharply. 

“I can’t just-- heal nothing,” Lambert said.

Geralt whipped out a knife and Lambert held up his hands, palm-out. “Hey!” he said. “Hey now. It’s--”

“Come off it,” Geralt said. “Does it only work on headaches, or--”

“So far I’ve tried it on a sprained knee, some big claw wounds, Keira’s headache, a busted thumb,” Lambert paused, contemplating. “Oh and I got partly disemboweled by a wyvern and it didn’t totally fix it but it helped a _lot_. Knocked the rest of the damage out with Swallow but the Sign got me to the point where I could sit up, which isn’t nothing.”

Geralt unfastened one of his bracers and yanked it off, shoving his sleeve up to bare his forearm, and then before Ciri could do more than yell in dismay, sliced across the flesh of the top of his forearm. “Fix that,” he said.

It was actually fairly low-stakes, Ciri realized, despite the alarming appearance of the blood on his pale skin; he was a Witcher, after all, and not only could he heal easily, he also knew how not to damage himself beyond repair. Aiden was shaking his head slightly, smiling. Lambert sighed, annoyed, and held out his hand, and cast what looked exactly like any Witcher Sign, except it was a different shape.

Geralt’s skin knitted back together, and he used his other sleeve cuff to wipe away the blood, frowning intently. “That--”

“That’s amazing,” Ciri said, hopping off the table to look closer. “And it works on-- you said you cured Keira’s headache with it.”

“I did,” Lambert said. “It works on humans, I think. Well, mages anyway. I’ve used it on her a couple times now.”

“How does it know what to fix?” Ciri asked.

“You shape it like any Sign,” Lambert said. “Like with _Axii_ , when you decide how hard to do it, like whether you’re going to stupefy someone or completely make them do something horrible or just nudge them with a suggestion a little. You shape it to how the injury is, and keep it from going too deep.”

Ciri nodded thoughtfully. “Have you learned how to do it?” she asked Aiden.

“No,” Aiden said, “not yet. Lambert showed me, and I can almost see it, but I can’t quite figure out how to make it work. Like… I can make the shape with my hand, but I can’t make the shape… in… the place where the power is.”

“Keira made the spell-shape,” Lambert said. “She shaped the cantrip so it’d be there, and then I just have to fill it. That’s how Signs work; there’s a pre-shaped cantrip and we just fill it with the power we’ve got. She gave me a focus object I can draw from but that’s not actually necessary, I keep it because it’s got the spell-shape attached to it so I can use that.”

“Ah,” Ciri said, interested. “So if I just-- if I copied that spell shape, I could give you each one, and then you’d all have this new Sign. It can’t be that easy.”

“It seems to have been,” Lambert said. “I mean, she worked on it for a few hours, but the part for me was dead simple.”

“Show me,” Ciri said, and that passed the next half an hour. Ciri wasn’t the most comprehensively-educated in classical spellcasting, but she knew enough to pick apart the structure Keira had made to form the cantrip, and duplicate it with some trial and error, and then she bound it to Geralt’s bracer so he could feel it and fill the space, and then Lambert had to cut his arm so Geralt could cast on it and the first try didn’t work, it just bruised him and he swore a lot but squared up gamely for the second try. That worked, and then Ciri excitedly realized she could use this information to copy Signs for herself, if only she could figure out their shapes. 

“All that time Eskel spent working with me,” she said, “and he never figured out to tell me to look for the shape.”

“To be fair,” Lambert said, “I think the shapes are… more or less built-in. We can’t see them or feel them from the outside, we just fill them.”

She realized she was going to have to spend a lot more time exploring to figure out what shape the other Signs’ cantrips really were, so she moved on and worked more on the new healing Sign, and managed to build another copy of it and tether it to a bead strung on a bit of cord for Aiden. Poor Aiden-- he’d seemed perfectly normal up to this point, but now she noticed that every time she did anything with magic he controlled a flinch. He was doing better than he had any right to, but he’d certainly spent three years being tortured by a mage.

Ciri took his hand in hers and just held it for a moment before trying to do any more magic. He was tense, waiting, but after a moment he made eye contact. “Just sit here a moment with me,” she said quietly. “This doesn’t have to hurt.”

He laughed, his shoulders coming down from their tight posture around his ears. “I’m sure it won’t,” he said. “Well, it might hurt Lambert.”

“I’m game,” Lambert said. 

Once Aiden’s posture had gone more normal, Ciri tied the cord around his wrist and talked him through filling the space connected to it with power the way he would a Sign, and he was a little calmer and more prepared for it.

He gave Lambert yet another bruise trying it out the first time, but then he healed the bruise on his next try, and then healed the initial cut on his third try, and Lambert sagged a bit in relief and Aiden pulled him into his lap and petted him soothingly for a few moments-- partly, Ciri could see, to reassure himself.

“Where is Eskel?” Ciri asked Lambert. “He’d love this.”

Lambert shook his head. “You’ve heard from him more recently than me,” he said.

“I thought he was going to visit you,” Ciri said.

Lambert shook his head again. “He didn’t,” he said. “I expected him to, but I never did hear from him.”

They both looked at Geralt, who frowned. “I haven’t heard from him,” he said. 

“Keira said she could make a locating spell to find him,” Lambert said hopefully, looking at Ciri.

“I don’t know how to do that,” she said. “And if I have him found, the message will get twisted to having him dragged back here. I don’t want to do that.” She sighed. “Emhyr’s spies could find him.”

“Maybe let Keira try,” Geralt said doubtfully.

“If we can ever get in contact with her again,” Lambert said, looking truly tragic.

“It has been two days,” Aiden said, a little wearily, but he still looked guilty. 

“I spoke to her yesterday,” Ciri said. “I will speak to her again probably tomorrow. I will let her know you are concerned not to hear from her. I doubt she intends to abandon you; she mentioned the eye replacement project last time I spoke to her and that will involve her having direct contact with both of you.”

“I want to ask her how to find Eskel,” Geralt said, frowning.

“She found Aiden using some thing about resonance,” Lambert said. “Apparently it’s easy if you can do magic. So she was going to do that with Eskel, using some of his stuff I’ve got in storage at the safehouse. Oh-- Geralt, I have a bunch of your stuff there too. We hauled everything out of Kaer Morhen that we didn’t want looters to find, so-- I have all your books, and spare blankets, and so on.”

“Oh,” Geralt said. 

“It seemed best,” Lambert said, a bit self-conscious Ciri thought. 

“Thanks,” Geralt said. “I’ll have to come look sometime.”

“Eskel is probably fine,” Ciri said. “Neither of you have been on the Path lately. I’ve a message relay and they know any news of Witchers is supposed to come to me, so if he’d done anything noteworthy like get killed, I’d’ve heard of it.”

“It’s not noteworthy when a Witcher gets killed,” Geralt said, a little grimly. 

“I have people,” Ciri said. “I can move it up the priority list. We don’t need to hassle Keira over yet one more thing. But I will let her know you’re concerned for her, Lambert. Possibly the three of you need to have a grown-up conversation about what’s going on, sometime when she’s not feeling under pressure.”

It was time to sober up. They’d gone through about three-quarters of the bottle of spirits. Lambert insisted on feeding them all the meal he’d been working on when they arrived, which had been simmering away the whole day.

It tasted like the food at Kaer Morhen, and Ciri had to spend a moment getting herself back under control as she chewed her second bite. Everything she ate now was exquisitely-prepared to Nilfgaardian standards, with rare spices and fresh ingredients and labor-intensive preparation techniques, served in aesthetically-pleasing presentations to maximum effect. This was just a simple stew, heavy on the meat, with root-cellar vegetables sweetened with long storage and dried herbs, spooned into trenchers carved from yesterday’s bread and eaten with the crusts, since they didn’t have enough dishes to go around. It was home food, from a home that was gone. 

But there was no time to get maudlin about it. Ciri embraced Lambert for a long moment after the meal was done, just breathing him in and letting her arms remember the shape and size of him. “I’ll talk to her,” she said. “And we’ll find out where Eskel is. I’ll be in touch with you soon.”

She embraced Aiden as well, learning his dimensions. He was taller even than Geralt, taller than Eskel, thought not quite so broad. “Good luck with the harem,” he said to her. 

“Think I’ll set myself up a retiring room that’s all cushions and bare-breasted maidens,” Ciri said.

“That’d be living,” Aiden said, nodding seriously. 

“We’ll figure out your eye,” she said. “And your. Situation.”

He laughed. “That’s one way of putting it,” he said. 

She linked her elbow through Geralt’s as he finished saying his farewells, and they walked back into the woods. “You _didn’t_ fuck him, right?” she said, meaning Aiden.

Geralt laughed, throwing his head back with it in a way he rarely did-- he’d sobered up less than she had, she judged. “Maybe!” he said. “Maybe. That’s our secret.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the working title for this bit is Aiden Gets Unwittingly Heteronormative) (don't worry Lambert doesn't put up with it)

Philippa had a workshop set up in the back room of a shop in a bad neighborhood of Novigrad. She clearly hadn’t had it long, and she didn’t have much good equipment, but she had the basics. Enough to be going on with. Keira had brought along an overstuffed bag, one of the sort that was larger on the inside and charmed to be near-weightless, full of everything she could think of that they might need.

Philippa was businesslike and surprisingly no-nonsense and polite as they got down to business. Keira kept waiting for the inevitable cruel snideness to creep in, but it never did, and the unexpected reprieve only made her more tense.

She held it together pretty well, she thought, as Philippa walked her through creating the rig upon which the gemstones would sit to grow tissue on them, and talked her through the process with surprising generosity about her own failings in this. It involved partly telling the story of several difficult times in Philippa’s recent life, and that Keira had no real trouble with; it was easy to fall into banter, to tell the story of her own ignominious exile in Velen, the fleas in her bed, the filth and boring sameness mixed with mortal terror. Keira let herself forget, for a little while, how dangerous Philippa was, and all the reasons why they were not generally friends, in the telling. It was almost pleasant.

They paused for a meal, and caught up a bit on their various friends and acquaintances-- dead, mostly, or tortured, or-- dead, really, was most of it-- before they went back to the worktable.

“So,” Philippa said, “this is the setup, but you need, of course, to use the gemstones he’s been carrying on his person, to be getting started with.”

“He’s only had them for a day or two,” Keira said, jotting down measurements in her little book of sundries.

“I’d wait until it’s been more like four or five days, at least,” Philippa said, “and try with one, but have him keep carrying the others. It’s not likely it will work.”

Keira nodded thoughtfully, tapping the back of the pen against her chest as she considered it. “Now,” she said, “removing what’s there, in his eye socket I mean, and replacing it-- can you give me some idea how that process will go?”

“I can guess at it,” Philippa said, “but.” She sighed, and seemed unhappy. “Likely I would have to see him, to know for sure.”

“I’m not eager for that to happen,” Keira said. “I-- he can barely put up with _me_ , and even--” She shook her head, wriggled her fingers and vanished her pen back to the place where she stored it in her holdall bag. “You’re right, though, I don’t think we have a choice.” She blew on the ink in her book to dry it.

“Perhaps he’d consent to be sedated,” Philippa said. “So he wouldn’t be so concerned. His fear is understandable, but it’s unavoidable.”

“I think he would be even less comfortable being sedated,” Keira said, “or under any kind of control at all. No, he’s going to have to go into this alert.” For some reason, she was extremely reluctant to have Philippa see Lambert at all but likely it made the most sense to have him there, for Aiden’s comfort. Well, there was no help for it. “Probably Lambert can keep him calm.”

“Hm,” Philippa said. “Well, it’s going to be a touchy little procedure, and we might need to restrain him or sedate him for at least the most ticklish parts of it. How do you think he’ll take that?”

“I don’t know,” Keira said. “We’ll have to manage that obstacle when we get to it.” She sighed, snapping her book shut and vanishing it into her holdall as well. “I’ll talk to them. They’re Witchers; they know how to survive shit.”

“Are they… close? With one another?” Philippa wondered.

Keira gave her a blank look. “They must be quite good friends,” Philippa said a little peevishly, by way of explanation. “If Lambert can control Aiden when he’s panicked.”

“Yes,” Keira said, “they’re very close.”

Philippa raised her eyebrows, and waggled them a little. “What,” Keira said.

“I had assumed you were in a relationship with the one of them,” she said, “but-- both? Really?”

Keira managed not to scowl, and pasted on a fake smile. Here it came; Philippa was going to feel the need to pry apart all the details of her relationships so she could pass judgement on them. “No,” she said, “I’m-- Aiden can hardly stand to be in a room with me, I’m not about to--”

“He didn’t fall into your arms in gratitude for the rescue?” Philippa said lightly. “A shame. Some men have no sense of duty.”

“I’d rather not have a man who was with me out of duty,” Keira said, unable not to snap about it.

“I hadn’t intended for that to hit home,” Philippa mused.

“Duty, or pity,” Keira said, “or obligation-- for that matter, fear! I’d rather not have anyone be with me for the sake of fear.”

“Fear tends not to be a good basis for a relationship,” Philippa said, “but you can have some pretty good sex with that as the foundation.”

“No, thank you,” Keira said. “Not-- if you’re both afraid of something, and you come together and seek comfort against it, that’s-- that can be good, but I don’t want to fuck someone who’s afraid of me.”

“I think you and I have different tastes,” Philippa said dryly, leaning back against the table and giving Keira a contemplative once-over.

“That’s likely,” Keira said. She’d heard Philippa only slept with women now. “I’m not picky about gender.”

“I’d heard you’d fucked Yennefer,” Philippa said.

“Mm,” Keira said, noncommittal. If she’d heard that, though, she’d have to have heard it from Yennefer. Or from someone Yennefer confided in. Or it could just be a guess. It was not up to Keira to be the one to discuss it. “I mean, in a crowd full of lovely breasts, her tits really are exceptionally fantastic. I can neither confirm nor deny this rumor of which you speak but there is no point denying that I _would_.”

“But it’s-- this Witcher, the one who still has both his eyes,” Philippa said. “You _are_ having an affair with him, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t call it an affair,” Keira said. “We passed an agreeable winter together during which neither of us had any other options.”

“And then you’ve put yourself out considerably to rescue his… friend,” Philippa said.

Keira contemplated what best to say, so that she didn’t sound insane. Well, but of course she could defend her actions; she’d done nothing that wasn’t perfectly reasonable, hadn’t she? Of course. “He’s kin by upbringing to the Crown Princess,” she said, “and so is this friend of his. What better way to plead my case for a pardon before the new ruler of the land? Of course I’ve put myself out considerably, Philippa, and it’s not like you aren’t benefiting from it as well.”

Philippa _hmm_ ’d to herself, and set about tidying the workbench. “I hadn’t thought you so calculating as that,” she said, after a few moments. “It’s the sort of thing _I_ ’d do, given the opportunity, possibly, but I hadn’t thought you were so politically-minded.”

“I’m friends with them too,” Keira said, a little stung, though she wasn’t sure why. “I went to Kaer Morhen in the first place to be of help and make new allies, and having spent time with them, yes, I’ve become fond of them, and being fond of them, I am interested in helping for the sheer sake of being able to right a wrong. But you can’t deny it’s also politically expedient.”

“It might be more trouble than I could bring myself to go through, anymore, for a man,” Philippa said, “but then, you’re young.”

“For a man,” Keira echoed. “For a man! This _isn’t_ all for a man, didn’t I just explain it?”

“No, you did,” Philippa conceded, though with an air of skepticism.

There wasn’t really any further defense available; if she insisted, she was only going to look defensive. She _would_ be being defensive. Philippa, horribly, wasn’t wrong.

“Well,” Philippa said, when she’d packed everything away. “I guess we’ll be in touch about the next session. Give it a few more days before you start, and I’ll meet with you to see about what kind of procedure we’ll need to do to install it. You’ve got the benefit of being able to see what you’re doing, so it should be much easier for you than it was for me.”

“Yes,” Keira said, a bit subdued. She was so tired. This was going to be a long, involved process, and Aiden didn’t like her, and Lambert felt sorry for her, and it was going to be a long dismal slog of bullshit to get through this. But she couldn’t just walk away, not now.

Philippa gave her a long look. “You’re a glutton for punishment, Keira,” she said. “Why do you let people treat you so badly?”

“I’m not letting anyone treat me badly,” Keira said, stung, “except maybe you.”

Philippa gestured with one hand, as if this illustrated her point. Well, it _did_ , somewhat. “I’ll see you next week,” she said, with a small wry smile.

Keira portaled back to the safehouse in Kaedwen and threw herself into constructing her gemstone tissue culture rig rather than dwelling on that uncomfortable observation.

* * *

Lambert rolled over, discovering that he was alone in bed. Aiden had been sleeping strange hours, still, occasionally tormented by nightmares, so he wasn’t terribly surprised. His internal time-sense told him it was a little ways to dawn, but not terribly long, so he rolled out of bed, shoved his feet into his house shoes, and padded silently into the kitchen.

Aiden was sitting at the table with a candle lit, reading, and glanced up as Lambert came into the room, making an aborted furtive gesture with one hand and then dropping it. He’d been thinking to hide the book he was reading, Lambert realized, and came over frowning to look and see what it was.

It was Lambert’s journal, the book he carried with him to write down what happened. “Hey,” he said, annoyed. Everything he wrote in it was ciphered, but Aiden knew some of the ciphers. But Aiden also knew that the book was private.

“I just felt the need to double-check some of your data,” Aiden said, very clearly deciding to be an ass instead of apologizing.

“That’s _private_ ,” Lambert said, reaching for the book.

“I _died_ , Lamb,” Aiden said, putting up a hand to stop him.

“Fuck you,” Lambert said, because it fucking _worked_ , he felt a pang in his chest and couldn’t bear to wrestle Aiden over the book.

Aiden grinned briefly at him, but then his expression sobered and he put his finger down on the page he was reading. “I can’t possibly be reading this chart right,” he said.

“You’re certainly not,” Lambert said, “because you’re not supposed to be fucking reading it.” He tipped his head to see what the chart was.

“This definitely looks like one of your charts about fucking,” Aiden said. “And this axis is the incidents, and then this set of glyphs is for which acts, and then this is who came when and how often, right, and then--”

“Fuck,” Lambert said, because he was right, about all of that.

“-- so like, bud, either I’m misunderstanding something, or you have been going at it like fucking _rabbits_ , me lad.” Aiden propped his elbow on the table and dropped his chin into his hand and looked up at Lambert with a strangely soppy expression.

Lambert’s face felt hot. “I,” he said. “We. It’s--”

“Shh,” Aiden said, laughing. “Come here, sit down,” and he tugged Lambert into the chair next to him, and put his arms around him, and kissed the side of his head. “Don’t look like that, baby. Listen, I’m not making fun of you and I’m not jealous. I’m just glad you’ve been-- good, you know?”

“I didn’t touch anybody for over two years,” Lambert said, feeling like someone had taken all his insides and shaken them up. “I didn’t-- I wouldn’t--”

“Baby I _mean_ it,” Aiden said. “I’m glad. I’m not jealous.” He shook Lambert a little by the grip he had around his shoulders, and kissed the side of his head again. “You know how it felt, all that time, all those years, I’d come back to you and you’d be--” He paused, and sighed. “Every time, Lambert, every time I had to teach you again that it was okay for someone to touch you. Every time it was like the first time anyone had ever been--”

Lambert pulled away. “I’m sorry I’m so _frigid_ \--”

Aiden grabbed him and yanked him back, hard enough that he overshot the chair; Lambert’s heart wasn’t in resisting, so he wound up enfolded in Aiden’s arms and pulled halfway into his lap. “No,” Aiden said. “No. _No_ , Lambert. Not that. No! I fucking _died_ and I will not have you make this a _stupid fight_ , I am _dead fucking serious_.”

“Okay,” Lambert said, for once in his life passively accepting this sort of thing, because Aiden’s voice was trembling and he had broken into tears. “Oh-- okay, Aiden. Okay.”

“Twenty years,” Aiden said. He was crying. “Twenty fucking years, and I’d find you again and you had your walls up and nobody’d been in them but me and I used to kind of be flattered but it started to upset me, because what if-- what if something happened-- to me-- what if I fucking-- fucking _died_ , Lambert, and then nobody went in your walls ever and you just closed off and-- just let that part of you die--”

“Shh,” Lambert said awkwardly, and managed to get an arm free to wrap it around Aiden’s neck. “Shh, love--”

“I don’t know her,” Aiden said, after a long quiet moment of hanging onto Lambert and getting his shirt wet. “I don’t. But she’s got to really be something special if she got you like that. And I don’t-- I don’t want that to stop, Lambert. And I get it, it’s her prerogative if she doesn’t want to share you, but if-- Lambert, I would agree to just be your friend, if that’s what she wants.”

“What,” Lambert said, feeling like he’d missed a step somewhere.

“If she won’t share you then she doesn’t have to,” Aiden said. “I don’t want her to give you up. I-- I could do that, you know? I could get my kicks wherever and not mind it as long as I got to see you. As long as I knew somebody was taking care of you like that.”

“What?” Lambert said, baffled.

“If she’s-- that’s why she left,” Aiden said. “I mean, obviously-- Lambert, she doesn’ t want to share you. If she can’t have you to herself she doesn’t want-- some people are like that! Some people are like that, Lamb, and it’s fine, and I assumed you were like that, and you’re not and that’s fine but she is. And I’m saying, Lambert, the thing is-- I love you, and I love you in every possible way, and obviously I love fucking you, everything we do of that is exactly what I want, but it’s-- that’s maybe the thing I care about _least_ in all the things about you and me. If we never fucked again I would be all right with that as long as I get to keep everything else.”

“What,” Lambert said again, completely lost.

Aiden sat up and let go of Lambert and rearranged him in his chair, himself in his own chair, wiped his face with his hand, and then held onto Lambert’s shoulders squarely, carefully, delicately, evenly. “Lambert,” he said, solemn and composed. “You love Keira. She, very clearly, returns the sentiment. However, she is not comfortable having a sexual relationship with you while you are in a sexual relationship with me. Some people feel like that as a matter of course. If you want to have a sexual relationship with her, you have to _not_ have a sexual relationship with _me_.”

Lambert stared at him, shaking his head slightly and opening his mouth, but Aiden put one finger over his lips. “Let me finish,” he pleaded, and he was so pretty, his face so serious and his eyes so wide and luminous and limned with shed and unshed tears, that Lambert kept his mouth shut and let him. “I’m telling you that my feelings for you are large and comprehensive enough that if, in order to continue your sexual relationship with Keira, you have to discontinue having sex with me, that would be all right. I can work around that. I don’t think she can, so it may well be a choice between that, and no relationship with her at all. I like her for you so much that I don’t want that. I want you to continue to have a relationship with her.”

Lambert stared at him for a long moment, and then lunged forward and bit the finger Aiden still had over his lips, rather hard, and while Aiden was yelling in startlement, he climbed into the other Witcher’s lap, pinning him to the chair. He let go of his finger-- he’d drawn blood-- and stared into his face from extremely close-up, and said, “Aiden, you’re a fucking idiot.”

“I’m dead serious, you ass,” Aiden protested hoarsely, but Lambert had him pinned effectively enough that his longer limbs weren’t going to do shit for him. He thrashed a little, but short of breaking the chair he wasn’t going to get out.

Lambert kissed him, and Aiden resisted for a moment but then let his mouth open, and neither of them really breathed for a little while, until Lambert decided they’d better. He pulled off, breathing hard, and said, “You’re a fucking idiot and you don’t get to decide that.”

“I’m not saying I’m deciding that,” Aiden said, a little breathless-- and hard, he was hard, hitching up a little under Lambert’s weight-- “I’m saying I’d offer that-- _fuck_.”

“She’d be a fucking idiot if she believed you for five seconds,” Lambert said. “No, you’re not doing that to her. You’re not doing that to _me_. Fuck, you’re supposed to be the smart one.”

Aiden whimpered a little as Lambert ground himself down against his erection. “Listen,” he said plaintively, “I’m not at my best lately.”

Lambert sighed, and dropped his forehead down against Aiden’s temple. “You fucking died,” he conceded.

“I fucking died,” Aiden said, voice a bit thick. He had his head tipped back and was breathing hard, trying to get himself under control. “Fuck, this is-- I’m having a lot more trouble than I-- well I didn’t expect to survive so I guess I never expected-- fuck.”

“Babe,” Lambert said. “You just gotta-- take your time, baby.”

“I’m tired of not being me,” Aiden said. “I’m tired of-- this _is_ me now and I don’t like it.”

Lambert kissed him, sweetly now, and held his face between his hands. “I know,” he said softly. “It’s all right.”

After a little while, Aiden got his breath enough to say, “But she’s good for you.”

“I have to just talk to her,” Lambert said wearily. “I don’t know how, but I’m going to try next time I get the chance.”

They sat there like that a little while, arousal cooling back down into something calmer. It was nice to have this kind of time, and space, Lambert thought; their relationship before had always been in stolen moments and there had always been a kind of desperate urgency, get it while you can, and then a long parting. They’d never been able before to take their time like this. It was Keira’s doing, that they had this space; Lambert would’ve had to be back on the Path by now, if for nothing else than to earn enough money to buy Aiden a new steel sword so they could both take contracts.

Aiden shouldn’t be doing any contracts at the moment, though. He was physically fit enough but his eye gave him too much trouble and Lambert privately thought his reflexes were fucked from so long in confinement.

“Let’s get out of this fucking house,” Aiden said.

“And go where?” Lambert asked.

“I’m not saying we should strike out and take to the Path,” Aiden said.

“I can only do so much for your headaches,” Lambert put in.

“I know,” Aiden said, grumbling. “I’m just saying-- I’m going nuts and I need to do _something_. Can we at least go hunting, or something? Where the fuck are we?”

“We could go look at the messageboard in town,” Lambert conceded, after a moment’s thought. “I did notice there were some things there.”

“Yeah,” Aiden said, lighting up.

Lambert sighed, and climbed out of his lap. “Fine,” he said.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

“Keira,” Cirilla said, and the megascope image glitched briefly, giving Keira enough time to compose her expression into polite neutrality. “I have a message for you when this is over, so if you can just keep your connection active at the end, I’d appreciate it.”

“Yes, my lady,” Keira said, doing her best to keep her expression steady. Fucking-- of course Lambert would appeal to the gods-damned fucking _Crown Princess_ to do his message-carrying for him, he of course had the kind of relationship with her where he’d think nothing of it. 

The meeting went smoothly enough-- they would hold an in-person council in Nilfgaard the following month, there were negotiations for a physical space, secured funding, and government support to re-launch the training academies for young magical adepts, there was a motion to set up a physical space somewhere in Temeria for the mages of the Northlands to convene safely with privileges and rights as yet to be codified in law, there were discussions about bringing into the fold some other surviving mages who had remained in hiding, and so on and so forth-- and at the end, Keira obediently stayed on the connection while the others winked out one a at time. Philippa was giving Keira an oddly-pitying look, lingering just a moment before she cut her own connection and disappeared. 

When they were alone, Cirilla said, “I visited with Lambert and got to meet Aiden. What a good setup you have for them!”

“I hope I was right and Aiden was ready for you,” Keira said, unable not to sound fretful about it. “I just-- I was so distracted--”

“It was fine,” Cirilla said. “I brought Geralt and-- well, we had a lovely time. Truly, though, how did you find that setup?”

“The old woman who lived there, her children had moved away or been killed in the wars, and she was trying to sell it so she could go and visit her surviving daughter in time for the birth of a grandchild,” Keira said. “You just have to keep an eye on messageboards, really-- I just searched a concentric area from Halmatia’s to find something we could get to without a portal.”

“So you bought the place,” Cirilla said.

“Oh, no,” Keira said, with a little laugh-- as if she had that kind of money-- “I’m renting it. Paid up through the season. She’s still looking to sell but nobody minds waiting a little. This way she’s not worried about the place falling down, and I promised to leave it nicer than I found it.”

“The single thing Lambert was most excited about was that its roof doesn’t need repair,” Cirilla said. She lowered her voice slightly, and said in a conspiratorial tone, “The other surviving Wolves were never great with heights and it got to the point where Lambert would do just about anything to avoid getting stuck always doing roof repairs.”

“He doesn’t have the most exacting of standards,” Keira said, and the little stab of fondness in her chest hurt rather terribly. 

“None of them do,” Cirilla said. She sighed. “So, I brought Geralt along. It was-- just lovely to visit with them. Part of what I am desperate to ask you about is the new Sign you taught Lambert, however. He said you broke down how Signs work, and explained it all to him?”

“Yes,” Keira said, relieved that the topic was something she didn’t have to brace herself against. “Oh! They’re just cantrips. It’s dead simple, you just lay out the spell structure and then tether it into something to make it automatic, and then anyone with a Witcher’s basic level of Sign-casting ability can use it. I made him a version that had a focus object attached so it would be self-powering, but that was because I wasn’t sure how Witchers access chaos. It turns out they don’t need the focus object.”

“I figured out how to do the one you made,” Ciri said, “mostly, but-- I want the other ones, can you tell me how to do those?”

“Of course,” Keira said. “Oh, of course. Well-- wait, why didn’t Triss do this for you?”

“I had very little control over any kind of spellcasting at that point,” Cirilla said. “It manifested late, for me, I think.”

“You wouldn’t need much,” Keira said. “In fact I think that’s the first thing I’d have tried? Especially if you’re being trained by Witchers-- if you have any ability at all, then I’d get your confidence up by just giving you Signs.”

“It would have made such a difference,” Cirilla said quietly, pensively, but then the line of her mouth firmed and she said, “but I’m sure Triss had her own reasons and limitations. To be fair, I was extremely uncomfortable with my powers and she may not have felt I could even manage that level of casting. Or, she might not have realized just how simple it was-- the Witchers were pretty cagey with her about their abilities, after all.” 

Keira considered that Cirilla was just being polite, and then she considered that it wasn’t her place to talk down about someone with whom Cirilla probably considered herself close, and then she considered that Triss was probably the closest friend she herself still had, and it was all rather dismal. “Well,” Keira said. “I’ll show you, at any rate. Ah, I’m not free today, but--”

“Oh, nor am I,” Cirilla said. “The question of scheduling is something I’d have to research before I could even begin to tell you when I’m free. I’ve an assistant whose entire job that is by this point. I’ll have her send you a message. But, I should pass along the actual thing I was meant to tell you, which is that Lambert’s concerned for you and very upset he has no way to contact you.”

“Of course he is,” Keira said wearily. 

“I told him you were obviously planning to contact him soon enough,” Cirilla said, “but he wanted me to make sure you were all right. I assume you have your reasons for not giving him a way to contact you directly.”

Keira sighed. “No,” she said, “I just didn’t have any energy going spare to make him a new contact token at the time, and haven’t had the time to drop another off. It’ll have to wait until next week now, I think-- I’ll have the setup begun for growing Aiden a new eye and I’ll come then to talk to him and collect a couple of the agates that are in his possession.” She rubbed her face. 

“That’s going well?” Cirilla asked.

“It is,” Keira said. “If at any point you wanted to involve yourself-- or any of your court sorcerers-- you’d be welcome, just let me know.” 

Ciri sighed. “Again,” she said, “time, but-- oh, do you have a good workshop for all this? Even if I can’t directly assist, I could certainly provide facilities.”

“That’s a thought,” Keira said. “I have-- a decent workshop, but I’m.” She hesitated. “I just don’t want Philippa in my space, it’s nothing personal. It’s professional territorialism, really; I just don’t want her prying into my secret recipes, and such.”

“Is that all,” Cirilla said, smiling as if amused, but Keira didn’t think for a moment that the Crown Princess hadn’t seen entirely through her motivations.

“I admit I’m reluctant to bring Aiden to Philippa’s workshop, where we’ve been collaborating,” Keira said. “Not only because I’m not sure I want to try to wrestle him through a portal.”

“I could possibly transport him to Nilfgaard,” Ciri said. “If you give me several days, I can arrange for that. You said next week?”

“Next week,” Keira said. “A few days from now, at least.”

Cirilla nodded. “I’ll make the arrangements,” she said, “and try to carve out time to come myself to collect them.” She looked straight into Keira’s face, and said, “Oh, but could you be the one to notify them? I haven’t time to spare to send them a message.”

Caught, Keira managed to smile brightly, and nodded. “Of course,” she said. 

_Fuck_. 

Well done. She didn’t want to go subject herself to Aiden’s inexplicable pity, and Lambert’s dutiful concern, and-- well, but there was no hope for it. That was a direct order from the Crown Princess. Probably, Cirilla thought she was being kind by giving Keira an excuse to see Lambert. Keira should be grateful for the consideration.

Fuck.

* * *

Keira managed to cram in a visit in the middle of the afternoon, at an hour when Lambert wouldn’t insist on feeding her. She’d refilled her focus-object necklace with most of the rest of the spare little hoards of stored-up chaos around the house, and she’d made herself eat several small meals over the course of the morning-- including some of the carefully-hoarded store of pierogies Lambert had made her-- and she’d cast a charm so she’d really slept the previous night, and she dressed carefully with no illusions, in a practical but well-turned-out outfit-- embroidered shirt cut low enough for cleavage and to display her customary necklaces of power objects but not so low she couldn’t wear a sensible breastband, a lovely brocade jacket in a vaguely masculine style but cut to show off a narrow-waisted figure with a full short skirt cascading attractively over matching fitted trousers and expensive tall boots. She applied light makeup to look mostly natural, cover her little scars and set off her eyes, but subtly. And she pulled her hair back sensibly, scraping it into a braid and then pinning it all down with a jeweled clip and using only a little magic to hold it all flawlessly in place-- but no illusions. Aiden could see through illusions.

Thus arrayed, she surveyed herself critically in the mirror. Trying too hard? No, she was clearly on her way somewhere else, trying too hard for whoever would be at _that_ meeting. This was fine. She looked… a little more masculine than she normally presented for other mages, but within normal parameters. Yennefer wore trousers all the time, that was perfectly reasonable. She’d dressed in men’s clothes for the shenanigans at Thanedd but that was too aggressive for this, she had to keep a few frills so people wouldn’t assume she was there to start a fight. 

Though. She _was_ prepared, if there should be a fight; not only were all her focus objects fully-powered, but her brass knuckles were clipped to a strap on her belt, in the back under the full skirt of the jacket, where she could easily free them one-handed. Much better than keeping them in a pocket, she’d found. 

_Stop overthinking this_ , Keira commanded her reflection, and left the room.

It wasn’t as though he’d broken her heart, or something, she thought morosely, as she gathered up her bag of supplies and conjured her portal. It was just-- a complicated situation, and everyone was doing the best they could, and she was a grown-up and more than that was a powerful mage with decades of experience who had survived any number of horrifying things, and she had to stop acting like a maiden besotted with her first beau. This hadn’t ever been a love story-- not for her, anyway. This was stupid, all of it was stupid. 

Avoiding it was stupid too, though. Cirilla was right, she had to just go face them.

She emerged from the portal in the normal spot, far enough from the house that it wouldn’t feel like an attack, and strolled out of the woods, making herself look businesslike but not too intent, her face already fixed into an expression of friendly politeness. 

The horses weren’t visible in the turn-out pen, which wasn’t in itself alarming, but there was also no smoke from the chimney, which wasn’t necessarily bad either as it was a somewhat warm day, but there also was no answer at the door, and now she allowed herself to begin to worry. 

She went in, after knocking and waiting and calling and waiting, and found the fire out-- but Witchers weren’t concerned about lighting a fire, so it wasn’t as alarming as if this were anyone else’s house-- and the doors and windows closed up. Swords missing, she thought-- they’d be hung up near the door, normally. Lambert’s gambeson wasn’t there. Her own discarded boots and jacket were next to the door, neatly arranged, and someone had cleaned all the mud painstakingly off of both of them. 

Their belongings were still in the house, as if they meant to come back, but they were not present. There was no food left out, all was covered and put away neatly. They had gone out, somewhere.

She spent about two minutes fighting down panic before she reminded herself that they were, both of them, Witchers, and adults, and they could go anywhere they liked and likely would be fine. She composed herself, and went into the bedroom-- they were both sleeping in the one bedroom, no one had touched the other bed, of course, it shouldn’t make her chest feel strange to see that-- and picked up a discarded shirt she knew was Lambert’s. 

A fabric object was fine for a location spell, on this kind of time-scale; they’d been gone less than a day, the ashes in the fireplace not quite entirely cold. Working efficiently, she cast a quick charm, and it took less than a minute to return her a location. Lambert was about seven miles away, on the other side of the little town, possibly in motion, though not rapidly. 

Well, she wasn’t wasting all day walking there. She conjured a little portal and stepped through it into what she knew would be a woods, but hadn’t expected to be a woods with a giant centipede in it. 

The thing reacted immediately to her, writhing around to face her where she was standing far too close for comfort, and she hastily levitated herself out of its reach. “Oh my,” she said, looking down from fifteen feet up.

“What the f-- oh, it’s Keira,” Aiden said, lowering his sword for a moment and wiping his brow on his sleeve. “Hey, I didn’t know you could fly.”

“I can’t _fly_ ,” Keira said, mildly annoyed. Lambert was right there, and while he looked a bit tired and flustered he was uninjured, and was currently gritting his teeth as he held an _Yrden_ trap on the centipede. 

“Are you going to hit it or what?” Lambert asked. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Aiden said. “Uh, sorry, I’m distracted by the flying sorceress.”

“I’m not _flying_ ,” Keira said. She was clearly levitating. Flying involved wings. 

“Sorry,” Aiden said, “the flying _pedant_ ,” and leapt at the centipede with startling grace. Keira realized she hadn’t seen him fight before; he tended in general to move through the world like he wasn’t quite sure what one was supposed to do with all of this extent of limb either, but with a sword he was suddenly possessed of a sureness of gesture and economy of motion that any dancer would envy. He moved almost faster than sight, shaping a Sign with one hand as he leapt in with a sword-strike that he put enough of his weight behind that he had to spin to finish executing.

The centipede hadn’t been able to anticipate his movements, and launched its counterattack in entirely the wrong direction, its mandibles snapping shut on nothing and its body uncoiling to receive the full power of Aiden’s strike. Wounded, it lashed and tried to come about but Aiden had already moved on and hit it from another angle, and his _Aard_ knocked the thing over enough that his third slash carved deeply into its vulnerable belly. 

Before the creature had even realized what he’d done, the attack was over and Aiden was far out of reach, grimacing at the ick dripping from his sword. “That was all right, yeah?” he said to Lambert, as the injured centipede writhed. 

“Ha,” Lambert said. “Put your fucking _Quen_ shield up, you dick.”

Aiden rolled his eyes. “Yes, Grandma,” he said, and cast a _Quen_ on himself. At that moment, the centipede finally figured out where he was, and hurled a gob of poison spit at him. Aiden ducked, twisting to one side, and the poison splattered along the edge of the shield, which flared but did not break. 

“See,” Lambert said, and leapt in with his own attack.

He was as fast as Aiden but he moved more heavily, tending to plant his feet to direct the weight of his body behind his sword strokes before he spun away. He hit the creature hard, pushing through the strikes so that the sword blade wouldn’t bind but would inflict as much damage as possible, and he hit it twice and then followed up with such a powerful stroke to its neck that the head came clean off as he spun through the blow and away.

The creature flailed in death-throes as Lambert let go of the _Yrden_ and jogged a couple more steps to fetch up next to Aiden. “There,” he said, self-satisfied. 

“Ugh,” Aiden said, making a face, “you made a fuckin’ _mess_ , Lamb.”

Keira pushed herself over and dropped down to the ground near the pair of them, after looking around to see that there were no more centipedes in the vicinity. No live ones, at least; there was another carcass a few yards away. “I see you’re keeping busy,” she said.

Aiden was fussily wiping his sword clean, but he gave her a surprisingly genuine grin. “Hey,” he said. “Yeah, we are.”

“Had to get out of the house,” Lambert said. “Anyway this is a sure sign of spring-- the giant centipedes are coming back out! Had to help out the locals.”

He looked happy too. He and Aiden had the air, Keira realized, of nothing so much as well-exercised hounds, bright with exertion and satisfied with themselves at a job well-done. It was so adorable she needed a moment to press her hands together, one fist inside the other, both tight just under her sternum, and compose herself.

“That’s wonderful,” she said. 

“We cleaned out a whole den,” Lambert said. “You’re just in time to not help.”

“That’s how I like it,” she said, unable to resist returning his grin. 

“I think that’s the last of ‘em, anyway,” Aiden said, squinting past her. He kept closing his artificial eye, then blinking it open to double-check what he was looking at, then closing it again; it wasn’t hard to tell it was bothering him a bit and he was trying not to use it. He elbowed Lambert suddenly, and said, “I’m gonna go start collecting trophies,” and walked away, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and binding it around his head. Oh, covering his eye-- he’d had it out to use while fighting. 

He shouldn’t have to choose between depth perception and being in pain, Keira thought, frowning, and then realized that he’d been making a point of leaving her alone with Lambert. Ah, fuck. 

“Listen,” she said, not quite looking at Lambert, “Cirilla asked me to come speak with you, to let you know-- Aiden should be here for this,” she said, cutting herself off in annoyance. “Aiden! The message was for you, too.”

He’d broken into a jog, and so was already a fair distance away. He turned back, frowning. “What?”

“I’m not going to ask you to come through a portal,” Keira said. “But we are going to need you to come to a place with a decently-equipped workshop.”

Aiden didn’t move to come any closer, but crossed his arms over his chest. “I can go through a portal,” he said, defensive in a way that suggested that _can_ certainly did not mean anything remotely approximating _would like to_. 

“Well, good,” she said. “Anyway, Cirilla--”

“Are we going right now?” he asked. “I mean, shame not to get the bounties on these guys, but I can go right now.”

“I don’t need you to prove to me how tough you are,” Keira said. “I’m just forewarning you, Cirilla was planning on stopping by in a couple of day, and was going to bring you to Nilfgaard with her for a visit and to use a workshop she’s going to set up there.”

“To Nilfgaard,” Lambert said, blank with surprise. 

“Neutral territory,” Keira said, with a little grimace, “between Philippa and me.”

“Neutral,” Lambert said, then looked concerned. “Have you-- are you fighting?”

“No,” Keira said, “but I don’t like the thought of bringing Aiden into her personal workshop one bit, and don’t like the idea of letting her know where mine is any better. There’s playing nicely together despite a troubled history, and then there’s just being a fucking idiot, and I’m trying to stay one side of the line, here.”

“Fair,” Lambert said, grimacing. 

“So that’s the message?” Aiden said. “Ciri’s coming to get me? Well, tell her I’ll be ready.” And he turned away and kept walking, a clear dismissal. 

“That’s the message,” Keira said. 

“Keira,” Lambert said, with quiet intensity. “I gotta talk to you.”

“I’m so sorry, I don’t have time,” she said, doing her best to sound regretful.

“Wait,” he said, and grabbed her wrist. 

“Lambert, it’s fine,” she said. “Listen, this isn’t a social call, I have to go.”

“Don’t shut me out,” Lambert said, pleading, and she was suddenly angry. How dare he make her feel like _she_ was the one leaving _him_? She yanked her wrist out of his grasp, uncomfortably aware that he was strong enough that if he hadn’t let her do it she wouldn’t have succeeded. 

“Listen,” she said, sharp with irritation.

Lambert’s head whipped around suddenly, just as she noticed a faint rumbling, and before she could react a centipede burst out of the ground directly under Aiden. 

Aiden’s _Quen_ shield had begun to fade from the previous fight but was still effective enough that it exploded in a bright flash, and he rolled to his feet and had his sword out before the thing managed another lunge. Lambert took off running, and Keira levitated herself up off the ground in case more of those things came up.

Aiden and Lambert were clearly used to fighting together; with only a couple shouted syllables, Aiden broke off his attack and threw a _Yrden_ to hold the centipede while Lambert hammered blows on it, and then stepped in to deliver an efficient coup de grace as Lambert’s momentum took him out of the creature’s range. It would have been flawless except that another centipede came up out of the ground right behind him and lunged at him just as he spun through his sword-stroke.

Lambert leapt in to defend, and Aiden scrambled through the end of his momentum, tripped on the dug-up earth where the second centipede had erupted, and skidded across the ground before rolling back to his feet. Keira wasn’t sure whether the centipede had hit him or not; he got up smoothly enough and hammered the centipede with an _Aard_ that knocked it over long enough for Lambert to score a critical hit on it. Then it was Lambert’s turn with the _Yrden_ , and Aiden jumped in to attack it. He shouted as he did it, and there was something ragged in his movements, but he followed through gracefully enough, and the centipede thrashed and went limp as Aiden’s momentum carried him out of the active area.

He landed on his knees and one hand, and Lambert dropped the _Yrden_ to run over to him. “Aiden!” 

“Fine,” Aiden said, terse and breathless, “it’s fine,” but he was clearly injured. Keira pushed herself up a little higher and cast a scrying spell to find out whether there were more centipedes, as Lambert knelt hissing next to Aiden to look at the damage. 

Keira pulled up an illusory map of the area as she read the resonance to show her the underground tunnels the centipedes had made, to show her the inert lumps that were the carcasses-- ah, a short distance away was the burrow they’d cleaned out, with half a dozen more carcasses-- and she watched intently for a moment, watching for movement, but found nothing larger than a frightened colony of moles at the edge of the area of interest.

She let herself down next to the two Witchers and showed Lambert the illusory map when he glanced up. “No more centipedes in the immediate area,” she said. 

“Could you check for shaelmaars?” Lambert asked. Shaelmaars were rare, but they overlapped a great deal with giant centipedes; it was a sensible question. 

Aiden was sitting with his knees pulled up, bent somewhat awkwardly with his arm over his head; the centipede had caught him along his side, curling around to his back, had neatly scored through the padded gambeson he was wearing instead of armor and opened him up to the bone along his ribs. He’d just managed to work the gambeson off, with a great deal of cursing, and Lambert was peeling his sliced and bloody shirt out of the wound. 

“I would have seen shaelmaars if there were any,” Keira said. They were very dangerous but they were also very large, and, of course, quite rare, especially this far north. She hissed through her teeth, and bent to examine Aiden’s injury. On a human, this would be potentially fatal, requiring layers of stitches to rejoin the damaged muscle tissue and skin and a complicated recovery process with a high risk of infection at every step. 

She’d seen just enough of the Wolves in action, between some hunting with Geralt and the battle at Kaer Morhen and a few little things Lambert had done, to know that probably as Witchers considered things, this was a scratch. “Do you need a spell for that?”

“Swallow should do it,” Aiden said, and then made a face. “Except we only have yours,” and he was addressing Lambert. “I lost all mine, and I’ve had no chance to replace them.”

“There’s nothing wrong with how I brew Swallow,” Lambert said, rolling his eyes as he rinsed the wound out with his waterskin. It was bleeding at a pretty good clip, but less than it would for a human. Considerably less, and Keira figured this here was a good illustration of the slow heartbeat’s benefit. 

Aiden glanced up at Keira. “The thing about the Wolf School,” he said, “is that they have this feeling like. Anything you do to your body, you should do extra-hard, to make sure it takes, and their potions?” He flinched at something Lambert did, made a little snarling noise, and said, “Ha, their potions-- are like why have something simply be effective when it can be like getting punched in the face instead?”

“You’re just a big baby,” Lambert said, blotting at the injury with a pad of gauze out of what Keira realized was his medical kit-- the little tooled leather bag he usually wore slung across his chest, that kind of blended in with the straps of his sword scabbards. It was haphazardly decorated with beads and trinkets, little bright things that gleamed out from the surrounding sensible leather gear. 

“Listen,” Aiden said to Keira, “no matter what, don’t ever take a Thunderbolt a Wolf offers you, it’s not worth it.”

“It would kill me,” Keira pointed out. She’d done some light analysis of the recipes for Witcher potions she’d found, and Halmatia had assembled an entire notebook of analysis of the potions Aiden had had on him when she’d gotten him, and from various other sources she knew that almost all of them were completely out of the range of anything a human could tolerate. 

“Well,” Aiden conceded, “that, but also, they’re terrible.”

Lambert held out a small vial to Aiden, and Aiden made a face, but took it from him and held it in his hand to work out the wax-sealed cork. “So you cleaned the injury first,” Keira said to Lambert, “so that when it healed, it wouldn’t heal over any contamination or inclusions?”

“Yeah,” Lambert said, “pretty much. I mean, it still works if you don’t, but I hate picking gravel out of scars, y’know?” 

“Why not use the healing Sign?” she asked.

Lambert shrugged. “He hasn’t taken any other potions for this,” he said, “we didn’t bother with any of the augmentation ones since there were two of us, so his toxicity is at baseline, and I just cast a bunch of Signs so I’m tired. Seems sensible to just use the potion.”

“Have you had any potions at all, lately?” Keira asked Aiden. She couldn’t help it, she was really curious.

“No,” Aiden said, giving the vial a thoughtful look. “None since-- before.” He laughed. “Probably, then, this’ll give me the shits, Lamb. I apologize in advance.”

“Just don’t be a baby about it,” Lambert said. 

Aiden knocked back the potion and, grimacing, held the vial out to Lambert, who took it and shoved the cork back in it before wrapping it in a scrap of leather and stowing it carefully in his bag again. Keira watched in fascination as Aiden scrunched up his face and shivered, rocking back and forth a little, and then made another little snarling sound and sat up straighter. The injury pulled itself closed as she watched with just a little awe, and Lambert very gently wiped at it with the gauze, ignoring a more pointed snarl from Aiden, and then folded the gauze up into itself and put it away as well. 

“Good as new,” Lambert said. 

“Ha,” Aiden said, and turned and spit on the ground. “Been a long time since I was new.” He spit again. “That was fucking terrible, give me your water.”

“It smells awful,” Keira observed.

Lambert handed over his waterskin. “It’s made of, fucking, drowner brains, pickled in alcohol, and worse,” he said. “And I’ve _had_ your version, Aiden, it’s not like it’s any better. Nobody takes Swallow for the fucking _flavor_.”

“I mean,” Aiden said, “ _that’s_ the truth.” He rinsed out his mouth and spat, and then took a long drink. “Faugh. Fuck, I’d forgotten how foul that was.” He shivered all over, and then shrugged elaborately, getting his shirt settled back in place, and gave the gambeson a once-over. “You got any pins? Gotta hold this piece of shit together until I can mend it.”

“Oh! I recovered a few pieces of armor I think were yours,” Keira said. “I’d forgotten, I meant to clean them up and get them back to you. I hadn’t thought you’d need them.”

Aiden looked up with interest. “I had a good set,” he said, “but I didn’t know-- figured Karadin looted my corpse.” He’d shoved the blindfold up on his forehead sometime during the fight, and it was sitting there giving him a rakish look. He rubbed at his eye, squinting uncomfortably, then tugged the blindfold back down.

Keira nodded. “I’ll bring the pieces next time I see you, I’m really not sure what’s what.” And then she remembered that she was dressed for a hasty escape, and here she was hanging around indulging her curiosity. “Ah, fuck, what time is it?” 

“Keira,” Lambert said, pained. 

“Lambert, it’s fine,” Keira said. “You’re fine, we’re fine, we’ll sort this out sometime when the world’s not convulsed with political intrigue.” She shook out her arms, adjusting her cuffs and preparing to make a portal. “Have you two got yourselves sorted, then?” 

She could suddenly see it now, the story of the two of them unfolding, with her as a supporting character turning up now and then to offer some magical fix. It wasn’t a great love story, and it wasn’t about her, but life could work this way. As long as she could keep Lambert from dragging it out into something tragic. Having seen them together, really working together, it was impossible to imagine them apart; she could see, now, how broken Lambert had been when she’d met him. 

It hurt, strangely, to see him made so whole, but it was a good hurt, a hurt like healing. 

“We’re fine,” Lambert said, a little sullen, a little anguished. He’d be all right. 

“No,” Aiden said. 

Keira rolled her eyes and looked at him. “Why, what’s--”

He had pulled the blindfold off and was curled forward, clutching at his head. “I don’t know what the fuck is happening,” he said, muffled, “but it’s _not good_.”

She dropped to her knees and grabbed his face. His eye. If he hadn’t had any potions since before the eye was installed, there could be an interaction-- it was the first thing she would have tested for, in Halmatia’s place. While she was adjusting to the difference in physiology between a standard human and a Witcher, she’d have looked into reactivity to toxins, because one of the basic things she knew about Witchers was that they subjected themselves to toxins on a regular basis. But, of course, Halmatia hadn’t known-- hadn’t _cared to know_ \-- the first thing about scientific rigor.

He jerked away from her reflexively, face briefly blank with terror, but then grimaced and patted her arm in apology, and submitted as she held his face between her hands and built a quick spell of scrying to see the damage. Both of his eyes were watering and he squinted painfully at her, grimacing and bunching his hands into fists in the gambeson he was still holding. 

“Fuck,” she said. “Aiden, I have to cast a spell on your face.”

“Do it,” he said grimly.

“It’s the connection,” she said, as she hastily tied off the spell, “between the enspelled object that’s serving you as an eye, and your actual optic nerve. There’s a bit of-- something, in there, I don’t know what, but it clearly is not a fan of potions, would be my best guess.” 

“I got that,” Aiden said. 

She cast the spell and he let his head tip back a little, both eyes going briefly wide and blank as he sucked in a deep breath. For a moment she was supporting the whole weight of his head between her hands-- surprisingly heavy, she’d noticed that with Lambert before, and had a working theory about Witcher bone density especially in the skull-- and then he mastered himself and blinked several times. 

“It’s only stopped the pain,” she said, “I don’t know if I can repair the damage.But I think that’s halted the degeneration.”

He was staring up at her from very close. His good eye was a greenish color, with gold flecks in the iris, and his skin was rough where he’d shaved a couple of days before but not since. Being in the sun had pinkened the skin of his nose and cheeks, and he’d gone a bit freckled. 

“Either you don’t have any illusions on,” he said, closing first one eye and then the other, “or the eye’s fucked, I’m not sure which.”

“I don’t have any illusions on,” she said, “it’s just makeup.” She made a wry face. “I’m late for a meeting with a bunch of mages, they can see through illusions too. Have to paint my face on, for them.”

He frowned solemnly, then closed his eye again, then alternated, and back and forth again. “I think it’s fucked,” he said grimly. 

She sighed. “I haven’t gotten that far in my studies,” she said. “I don’t know how the connection works.”

He looked at her from his original remaining eye. “At least this one seems to be working,” he said. “I’ll put up with it.”

She was in the midst of building another scrying spell. “Let me look at it for a moment,” she said. She had to let go of his face with one hand to cast the spell. “This is just to look,” she said, making her gesture of casting slow, and he tensed but didn’t flinch. 

Lambert crouched down next to her. “How bad is it,” he asked grimly.

“It’s not blind,” Aiden said, “but it’s not good.”

“Fuck,” he said, looking away. “Should’ve used the Sign, you were right, Keira.”

“No,” she said, poring through the results of the spell thoughtfully, “your reasoning was sound, Lambert, and it’s better to have discovered this now, with a healing potion, than immediately preceding a fight, if you’d taken one of those performance-boosting potions. Sounds like a good way to get killed, to me-- taking something to make you faster and having it melt out your optic nerve while you’re trying to fight?”

“That _is_ a good way to get yourself killed,” Aiden mused. “Fuck, I almost _did_ that.”

It looked like the way the eye was hooked in was that the gemstone was embedded in a fine mesh, at the back, of constructed tissue of some kind, and then the connections between that tissue and the remnants of Aiden’s naturally-grown optic nerve were created by a complex spell, self-powering in some way. There was no way Halmatia had cast this herself. None of this was described in Halmatia’s notes.

But it was, in Philippa’s. Now that Keira saw it, she understood what Philippa had been describing.

“We _did_ almost do that,” Lambert said. He sounded grim. He was perched on his heels with his arms crossed on his knees, his gauntlets off so he could chew worriedly at his thumbnail. 

“I really want to know who cast this spell,” Keira said, teasing out where the connections were damaged. “This is beyond Halmatia’s capability. This is some very complex work.”

“I wish I could tell you,” Aiden said. “I know I was there,” and he laughed, “but she didn’t let me remember it.”

“This was conspicuously absent from her notes,” Keira said. “She falsified her own notes, to make it seem as though she’d designed the whole thing herself, but there were huge gaps. It was clearly entirely fictional.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I can fix it until I understand it better.” She closed her hand and captured the illusory output of the scrying spell, and pushed it carefully into one of her focus objects so she could pull it out and consult with Philippa. 

The likelihood was extremely high that Philippa herself had constructed those spells. Philippa, or someone working closely with her. 

Which wasn’t, in itself, damning. But the fact that Philippa hadn’t seen fit to mention it thusfar... “You don’t remember, by any chance, what year it was when you got this,” she said to Aiden, who laughed humorlessly. 

“Not a chance,” he said. “Last time I knew the date was sometime in late summer of 1270.”

“Probably early in your captivity, though?” she hazarded. 

He shrugged. “Probably,” he said, “but there’s a bunch I don’t remember near the beginning, when she was first working out her control spells, and I was just-- unconscious, a lot, I think.”

“So it would be after that,” she said. “But, say, not _ver_ y recently.”

“No idea,” Aiden said. “I-- genuinely, no idea whatsoever.”

“Fair,” she said. “Listen, I will be extremely interested to know whether any of the mages I plan to work with on this are in any way familiar to you.”

“Duly noted,” Aiden said. 

“This is as stable as I can make it, for now,” she said. “If it starts hurting, Lambert can cast his Sign on it, that should keep it under control.” But she couldn’t really leave them like this.

Sighing inwardly, she released his face, and conjured a new contact token, and handed it to Aiden. “If he can’t keep it under control, then use this, and I’ll come when I can, but-- please, I’m not avoiding you, I genuinely am extremely busy. Please do not summon me if you don’t need me. Cirilla will come and get you in a few days and I will see you in Nilfgaard.”

She stood up, and he blinked up at her, keeping his bad eye squeezed shut. “But if he can’t keep it under control, do call me. I won’t have you suffer.”

Aiden nodded, and looked down. She didn’t look at Lambert. “Can you get home?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lambert said.

“Good,” she said, and made a portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy name-day to me! Happy Imbolc! Happy-- well, we're surviving, aren't we, unless we're not.   
> In four days I'll have been posting Witcher fanfic for one year.


	4. Chapter 4

A day of vaguely unpleasant obligations couldn’t really dampen Ciri’s mood. Not after the night she’d had, with beautiful Luliana, sharp-witted Luliana, canny and pretty Luliana, and her bright eyes and her pretty thighs and her soft, soft breasts, and the agreement they’d reached-- a night of surpassing delight, and Ciri wasn’t exactly mooning around like an idiot, but she was deeply, deeply satisfied in a way she hadn’t been in a very long time.

So really, nothing anyone said to her could truly upset her, not today.

Geralt read her immediately, and she’d half-anticipated him to be disapproving or scolding, but he just grinned at her, and a bit later knocked his shoulder into hers, and that was it.

Emhyr, she had expected to be dour and disapproving, but he instead watched her with a neutral expression, and at one point she was astonished to catch him hiding a smile. In their customary daily private meeting, one-to-one with no assistants present, he said, “You seem pleased.”

“I am,” she said. They always met in the hallway between the antechamber to his office and the private retiring room; they always stood close, there, and they never lingered more than a few moments, but this was the one time none of their speech had to be a performance, except for one another.

“Good,” he said. “You will tell me if your requirements change.”

“I will,” she said. She waited for him to say something exhorting her to caution, or reprimanding her choice; Luliana was nobody, a spare daughter of a minor noble family, without notable connections, and was one of the assistants who made up Ciri’s clerical retinue, and part of their agreement had been that there would be no public acknowledgement of their relationship, and their affairs would stay between them. But, of course, Emhyr had known, and Ciri had made no attempt to hide it from him; had she done so, she knew he would have tried even harder to stay informed. What they had, currently, was a fragile truce, and she wanted to build on that. Which meant, she made no effort to hide anything.

Emhyr took her hand in his, instead, and looked at it for a long moment. Long enough that she wondered if she had dirt under her nails, but no-- she had people who saw to it that she did not, nowadays. “I hope it works out,” he said finally.

“No words of caution or reprimand?” she couldn’t resist asking, slightly frustrated.

He looked up at her face, then. “No,” he said. “Nor advice. I recognize that I’ve absolutely no standing to advise you on this sort of matter.”

She blinked at that, a bit taken aback. “No?”

“What expertise have I in matters of the heart? None,” he said, and shook his head slightly, looking down again. He was still holding her hand. “The choices I have made have ensured that. Having only had failures in my own life, I cannot advise you, and it is presumptuous of me to so much as wish you well,” and he paused, glancing up briefly into her face. “But I do.”

She considered that for a moment. “Do you regret your choices?”

He shook his head slightly. “Regret is meaningless,” he said, “an indulgence for which I have no time.” He sighed. “But,” he added, “while hope is similarly meaningless, I believe I can permit myself to indulge in it, for your sake.” To her astonishment, he bowed over her hand and kissed it briefly, then released it and stepped back. “That your choices might go differently, and give you a kinder outcome than mine.”

And with that, he turned and walked out of the hallway, and Ciri let him have his dramatic and well-timed exit, this once, without resenting him for it.

Because she was, after all, in a _very_ good mood.

* * *

Her good mood buoyed her into her next meeting, and let her greet her father’s disapproving sorcerer with equanimity. “Such a workshop should really be located _outside_ the palace grounds,” Outis said, not for the first time.

Nilfgaardian mages were still a little odd to Ciri; they did not glamor themselves, but tended to look plain, and they tended not to have the self-importance of Northern mages. Outis was no exception; he was an unexceptional middle-aged man dressed slightly shabbily but in current severe Nilfgaardian fashion, with dark skin and dark eyes and graying hair, of smallish stature with a bookish sort of hunch to him that showed he did little physical and much academic work. He had absolutely no sense of humor or irony, but he was sharp as a whip and extremely competent, if a bit fretful. Most unusually to Ciri’s Northern sensibilities, he wasn’t her father’s court sorcerer, or anything of the sort; he had an academic position most of the time, and had been hired on expressly for this project, and nothing else, and seemed to have no problem with this. He was one of a group of sorcerers Emhyr tapped for specific projects, and everyone seemed to think this was normal and expected.

“The proposed shields around the room will be adequate,” Ciri said. “This is for a specific purpose.”

“There hasn’t been time to vet all of these items,” Outis fretted. Emhyr had had a crate brought in of items that had been looted from the workshops of various of the mages of the Northlands, as those mages had been executed by Radovid or by the Eternal Fire or had met sundry other unsavory fates. Much of what had been in their workshops was gone, sold or broken or pilfered or who even knew what, but some had filtered up as far as the incoming Nilfgaardian government, and all of that had been dutifully catalogued and hauled down here for use. As the Nilfgaardians in general tended to be unimpressed by Nordlings in general, there had been little interest in the spoils, and thus here they were, relatively undisturbed. Whether anything in the crate was actually useful or not, Ciri couldn’t begin to guess, and had no time to verify herself.

“That is part of what I will be relying on Keira Metz to do,” Ciri said.

“And how can we trust this Keira Metz?” Outis demanded. “A Nordli--” and then he remembered to whom he was speaking, and cut himself off, and stood there wide-eyed.

“I trust her enough,” Ciri said, letting it go, “and should that fail, I trust your shields to do what must be done.”

Outis stared at her a moment longer, and then nodded. “Very well, very well,” he said, and bustled off to oversee the casting of the wards.

“Be sure it does not interfere with her work, here,” Ciri reminded him, which he acknowledged with as minimal grace as he could manage, given her position.

Ciri managed to pull herself away from the uninteresting but vital afternoon reporting to come and see Keira after she arrived. The mage had been ushered directly to the workshop, but Ciri wanted to confer with her in person, partly to ensure that she felt important (it was crucial for mages to feel important, Ciri had long known), and partly because Ciri had tentatively begun to like Keira and wanted very badly to help sort out whatever her issue was with Lambert.

Keira had been in the workshop for a little while by the time Ciri arrived, and had made a considerable start on putting it in order and writing out a list of required supplies. She was in the midst of shifting things around when Ciri came in, and she was mostly using her hands to do it, not magic. It wasn’t that she was using _no_ magic, but she wasn’t wasting it on mundane matters. As Ciri stood in the doorway, Keira had just set down a rack of beakers and was making notes on a slip of paper, tapping her finger on her chin as she contemplated.

She was dressed beautifully, in a jacket and matching trousers, her hair pulled up in a style Ciri hadn’t seen her wear before. She looked very competent and professional and not yet really like herself at all, or at least not the way Ciri was used to her.

Keira noticed her then, and exclaimed warmly, coming over to greet her with a careful display that balanced friendliness and deference just so. “You passed on my message,” Ciri said, and Keira affirmed this, and related that she’d found Lambert and Aiden hunting giant centipedes, of all things, and that they seemed well.

“Aiden says he is prepared to come through a portal at any time,” Keira said, “and seemed to think I was going to spirit him away directly.” She shrugged. “I did not, as I was not actually prepared to do so, but. He promises he is ready.”

“Good,” Ciri said. She ran her fingers along the spiral condenser piping on the little still set up on one of the counters, remembering how the big one at Kaer Morhen had been cobbled-together from the remnants of two older ones. “Do you think it’s bravado, or do you think he’ll genuinely be all right?”

“Oh,” Keira said, “a little of each. He’s tougher than he looks. Oh, we found out while I was there that Witcher potions aren’t compatible with the prosthetic eye he’s got-- or, more specifically, with whatever substance was used to bridge the gap between his own tissue and the structure of the eye itself. So that was an unpleasant discovery.”

“Oh dear,” Ciri said.

Keira nodded solemnly, and went back over to the crate she’d clearly been picking through. “So I’m going to have to consult with Philippa on that, but I have a suspicion that such things just… haven’t been studied, so I’m more or less on my own.”

“Do you know where to start?” Ciri asked. She couldn’t imagine, but then, Keira’s education was so different from her own.

“I can think of a few places,” Keira said. “I mean, avenues of exploration-- I’ve done more research into Witcher potions than I think any of them are quite aware. That’s why you spread your questions around, you know?” She grinned a bit cheekily at Ciri, setting a box down on the counter, and then went back to the crate.

Reassured, Ciri said, “Emhyr thought you should have this equipment, by the way. I apologize if any of it is unsuitable, but most of it hasn’t even been categorized.”

Keira looked at the crate, and looked at the box on the counter, and smiled tautly. “I can recognize where a great deal of this is from,” she said.

“I also apologize if it’s upsetting,” Ciri said, more quietly.

“Well,” Keira said, “ _you_ didn’t kill them.” She peered into the crate, then went still. “Oh sweet mother Goddess,” she said quietly.

Ciri stepped a little closer. Keira reached into the crate and tugged on something, then pulled out, very carefully, a heavy, ornate box, wood with a great deal of inlay. It was about a foot and a half wide by two feet tall, and she set it very carefully down onto the counter, and then stood looking at it with one of her hands over her mouth.

“What is it?” Ciri asked, poised to go for help. Outis had retreated to a judicious distance, in another office far down the hall, but she could be there in a blink if she needed to.

Keira closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again. She reached out, and Ciri noticed her hands were shaking as she unfastened the catches on the sides of the box. Ciri took a wary step closer to look at the box.

The inlay had something of a Korviri look to it, and Ciri wondered whether perhaps this had belonged to Sheala de Tansarville. She didn’t know whether Sheala and Keira had been close; she knew they’d both been involved in the Lodge, but her perspective on events had necessarily been… rather different than Keira’s.

Keira opened the box, which swung out into two doors. There were small bits of things neatly slotted into compartments set into the doors, and inside, the main item in the box was nestled into a cradle padded with velvet. Keira pulled it out with movements best described as _reverent_ , and set it gently onto its base. It was a heavy metal object, with a base formed into a semicircular pair of flat arms, supporting an upright tube of ornate metal, with a platform that held a mirror at an angle, with a handle so it could be easily adjusted to a different tilt, above the base.

“What is it?” Ciri asked, curious. It was all ornately-decorated metal, brass chased with engraved designs; it had several knobs on the side, clearly to adjust it, all carved and inset with gems.

“It’s a very powerful magnifier,” Keira said quietly, her voice barely a whisper. “You put tiny objects, substances you wish to analyze, and such onto the little glass tray, and position the mirror to reflect light up through them, and then you look through this tube which is full of very precisely-ground lenses, and you can study the structure of things that are too small to see with your eyes.”

“That sounds fascinating,” Ciri said.

Keira nodded. “Sheala let me use it a couple of times,” she said, and wiped her face wearily. “We weren’t-- she wouldn’t have called me a friend, and I-- well.” She glanced over at Ciri, wiping carefully under her eye so as not to smudge her eye makeup. “She wasn’t a-- a nice person, but I-- I did admire her-- her _mind_ , a great deal.”

Ciri nodded. “I don’t-- you don’t have to apologize to me,” she said. “I’m not-- I wasn’t _glad_ to hear of her death. No one deserves what happened to her.”

Keira pressed her hand to her face, turning away a little, and choked off a sob. She was dead-silent for a moment, getting herself under control, and then she wiped her face with a dainty little handkerchief out of nowhere, and turned back to Ciri, her expression more composed. “No,” she said calmly, though her voice was a little thick, “no one deserved-- that.” She breathed carefully in, then out, and put on a tight little smile. “But, moving on, this is an extremely rare and valuable piece of scientific equipment and I congratulate you on its acquisition. Not only is it priceless unto itself, but if your people study it and have copies made of its design, you could advance many fields of study enormously.”

Her hand trembled slightly as she touched it, and Ciri had never had much of a gift for telepathy but it wasn’t hard to read that. “You can have it,” she said.

Keira went still, staring at her for a moment. “I,” she said, and hesitated a moment.

“Truly,” Ciri said, “I don’t think anyone here knows how to use it. If they do, they’ve already got one of their own.” She shrugged, and stepped a half a pace closer, lowering her voice slightly. “Keep this between us, but it makes me uncomfortable to see heaps of plunder from the Northlands spilled out in various rooms of this palace to be poked through as curiosities and dismantled for scrap.”

Keira nodded jerkily. “I,” she said, and hesitated again. “Thank you,” she said finally, and put the magnifier back into its box, closing the catches with a touch of reverence.

“Will the workshop suit?” Ciri asked. “Have you talked with Philippa about it?”

Keira nodded. “Ah,” she said, “the workshop suits, it’s ideal. As for Philippa--” she grimaced.

Ciri waited, rather than butting in.

“She doesn’t want to come down here,” Keira said. She sighed. “She’s got-- any variety of reasons and she rotates freely through them.”

“Well,” Ciri said, “I can’t exactly blame her for being reluctant. You’ve been unusually trusting.”

“Surely she knows,” Keira said, “that if you wanted her here, you would have little trouble forcing her to appear.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Ciri said, “and she knows that.”

“I’m not bringing Aiden to her grotty little studio in Novigrad,” Keira said.

“We can come up with a way that she can attend remotely,” Ciri said, wearily. “I have-- my fellow is very good at connecting things.”

“Ugh,” Keira said, but in a moment conceded, “fine.”

“We’ll make it worth your while to have come all this way,” Ciri said, smiling at her.

* * *

Aiden was sitting very still, kneeling in the corner of the room pretending to meditate. It was probably only convincing because Lambert was asleep. Not being able to meditate was a strange problem for a Witcher to have. It wasn’t much of a problem yet, because generally one only really needed to meditate when one was attempting to heal injuries, recover from toxicity, or brew new potions, and none of those things were entirely necessary at this juncture.

He didn’t know if he _could_ heal the trouble with his prosthetic eye. It was a good thing Ciri had given him the shape he needed to cast the healing Sign himself, because he’d cast it nine or ten times in as many hours, just now, and it was better than nothing but it also wasn’t entirely doing the trick.

It hurt, and worse, it was behaving incorrectly, giving him strange flashes of light at odd times, blurring and refusing to focus, and sometimes just going dark.

He wasn’t going to snap the token and summon Keira again. Every time he spoke to her he made it worse between her and Lambert. If he could just-- make himself scarce until they could sort it out-- but he couldn’t stand to be alone. That was why he couldn’t meditate-- he had to be alone in his mind to do it and anytime he was alone, he no longer could believe that he wasn’t trapped under control spells.

He didn’t need to meditate, it wouldn’t help, but-- well, it would be a distraction. He wasn’t about to cast _Cura_ again; he had fully mastered it, by now, and understood its limitations fairly well, and it could only dull the actual painful parts. The pain wasn’t what was bothering Aiden, it was the intermittent lack of function and occasional bursts of aggressive _non-_ function.

Finally Lambert rolled over and sat up. “You’re not really meditating,” he said.

Aiden didn’t have an answer for that, but he opened his good eye and looked over at Lambert wordlessly.

Lambert threw back the covers and rolled out of bed. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“What does it look like?” Aiden said wearily.

“Well,” Lambert said reasonably, “it looks like you’re meditating, but I can tell you’re not, your breathing is wrong.”

“Very astute,” Aiden said. He unfolded himself and stood up, stretching uncomfortably; the meditation position wasn’t all that comfortable if you weren’t actually meditating, and something somewhere in his physiology was deeply confused about not actually having had any meditation.

“Your eye’s bothering you,” Lambert said.

“You’re on a roll,” Aiden said, “of _noticing_ shit, congratulations to you.” He stretched his arms over his head, raising his ribcage and making his spine crackle along its length as it unkinked.

“I mean,” Lambert said, hastily shoving his feet into his house shoes as Aiden went out the bedroom door, “is it bad? Do we-- should we call Keira?”

“I,” Aiden said, swinging his arms from side to side to get the last kinks out of his spine, “would not call on her unless it was literally melting in fiery streams down my face.” He shook his arms out, rolled his head on his neck, and threw a cranky _Igni_ at the kitchen fireplace hard enough that the kettle jolted into a boil almost immediately. He turned and saw Lambert’s stricken expression. “It’s _fine_ , man, just _leave me alone_ about it.”

It had been three days since the centipedes, and he hadn’t slept any appreciable amount of time in all of that. They’d made a decent amount of coin off the bounty on the centipedes, and a bit more from collecting and selling the parts, and they still had a sack of assorted centipede bits that Lambert had insisted on saving for Keira. Lambert had tried to give all the money to Aiden, who had turned it down, but he’d wound up taking way more than half, in the end, because they’d used a bunch of it to buy him clothes that actually fit him. Lambert’s spares were fine but too short in almost every dimension, and there was not a single pair of Lambert’s trousers that even came close to being correct in _any_ part of them.

It would be nice if Keira had his armor, and that Karadin hadn’t looted it, but he wasn’t really holding out much hope. There was no way Karadin hadn’t taken his shit the moment he lost consciousness. Whatever she had, Halmatia had likely acquired elsewhere. What would either of those mages know of armor? But the padded jerkin Aiden had now was more decorative than functional, and slashed up as it was after his shitty mending job, it wasn’t even really decorative, and what they’d earned was barely a drop in the bucket toward getting him something that would actually protect him. Armor was _fucking expensive_.

Not that he could actually fucking make a living on the Path, at the moment. Not with a bum eye that was worse than useless, and no tolerance for potions whatsoever. No depth perception, he could probably adapt to; sudden random flashes of color he could probably live with, but the awful melting agony with a single Swallow?

Well, maybe if he just let it finish burning out, and it was just blind, he’d be better off; maybe then he could tolerate a regular potion. But what if that didn’t work? What if it just hurt worse every time?

He was fucked, was what he was, and he could handle the pain but not being able to be alone, not being able to sleep, not being able to meditate, not being able to take a fucking potion-- he couldn’t earn his livelihood, and while Lambert would likely stick by him so he didn’t starve, that wasn’t really how he wanted to live.

If only he could tolerate being alone, this was the kind of mood where it was best for everyone if he just went and was by himself for a while. He was out of his ability to pull on a genial face about all of it and get by. He needed to get out. Go hunting, go foraging-- go sit in a tavern and drink until some fucking local yokel meatheads gave you shit and you could knock some heads together and sate your occasional maudlin self-destructive tendencies in a relatively harmless way-- but none of that was really going to work out, at the moment, and especially not if he couldn’t sit still or take a potion or trust his own inner monologue not to go wildly off into paranoid nonsense.

This was really _not_ a mood to be in whilst stuck in a house with a concerned Lambert. Aiden knew this, and he rather suspected Lambert knew it too, but there really wasn’t anything to be done about it.

Lambert had kind of hunched his shoulders and was making them tea with a kind of set-jawed stiff-backed wary cowed aspect that Aiden viscerally hated. Because he recognized it; it was Lambert’s childhood instincts of placating the large violent man who was in a sour mood, and it was absolutely the last thing in the fucking world that Aiden wanted to be involved in, in any way at all but _least_ of all in the starring role of the large violent sour-mooded man. And his impulse was to get angry about this and shout at Lambert, and there was just enough left of the Aiden who was sort of okay at people and actually fairly good at Lambert to know that this was very much _exactly_ the wrong thing to do, in every possible way.

He went and sat down, carefully, instead of throwing himself down like he wanted to. He could say something like _I’m not angry with you_ but it would do nothing to take away that taut line of Lambert’s shoulders, and would possibly only make him more upset. But he just didn’t have the energy to come up with anything better to say.

He’d already split all the firewood, and re-stacked it all. He’d repaired the woodshed, and repaired all the fences. All of the hard-work, outdoor stuff was done. He was going to lose his mind, or Lambert would snap and kill him-- that was possibly the worst thing, that if you really set Lambert off in a way that dug up the horrible shit from his childhood, there was a phase like this where he was tense and frightened and then there was a horrible backlash phase where he became an unpleasant vicious terror, and Aiden genuinely didn’t know if they would survive that with himself as compromised as he was.

“Well, shit,” Lambert said, putting a cup of tea in front of him. “You’re thinking way too hard.”

“Not a lot else I can do,” Aiden said tightly.

Lambert put his arms around Aiden’s shoulders from behind. Tense as Aiden was, it didn’t help at all.

“Just put one hand either side of my head,” Aiden said helpfully, “snap my neck real quick, probably the only way you could make my mood any better.”

“Would be the quickest way,” Lambert mused, curling his fingers up around Aiden’s chin and playfully setting his other palm briefly against Aiden’s temple, as if to wrench his skull around.

They play-fought sometimes, when one or the other or both of them was in a fey mood, sometimes just for fun, and occasionally as foreplay, but it would trash this house, and Aiden didn’t want to wreck the place. He wasn’t actually sure whose house it was. “Don’t, though,” he said.

“No,” Lambert said, and kissed his temple. He hung on, though, for a bit, and Aiden didn’t relax much, but eventually had to grudgingly admit to himself that the sheer warmth and closeness helped ease the tension in his shoulders. And it was something else to feel, besides the pain in his eye.

He could almost meditate, like this-- with Lambert’s breath and heartbeat so close, his comforting scent and the grounding feeling that wasn’t quite a noise of the blood in his body, the living presence thrumming through his vessels.

“Oh,” Lambert said quietly, and Aiden realized he’d drifted a bit. Lambert let go just enough to come around and climb into his lap. “Here. Can this get you down?”

“I don’t--” Aiden said, and then gave up and pressed his face into the crook of Lambert’s neck. It wasn’t quite meditation, but he slid easily into it, whatever it was, and got pretty far down pretty fast.

Lambert just held him and breathed, slow deep meditation breathing, and soon enough Aiden was down far enough that whatever his fucked-up eye was doing was out of his range of perception.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah Ciri's girlfriend has spun off into a whole other idea so let's see where I go with that, separately. 
> 
> [Sheala / Silé de Tancarville / Tansarville](https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Sheala_de_Tancarville), if you weren't familiar.


	5. Chapter 5

Aiden surfaced from his not-quite-meditation some time later-- longer than he’d quite meant-- as their medallions buzzed, slightly out of phase with one another. He sucked in a breath and blinked, and his bad eye fuzzed, but resolved into a reasonable image of the room. “Portal?”

“Ciri, specifically,” Lambert said. “She does ‘em differently.” He climbed out of Aiden’s lap, and bent and kissed him on the head. Aiden slid one arm around his waist and pulled him in close, briefly squeezing him before he let go.

He stayed where he was, collecting his resolve. Lambert went to the door and opened it. A wash of cooler outdoor air came in across the room, and Aiden turned to face it. A moment later, Ciri strode up to the doorway, and held out her arms; Lambert embraced her smoothly, as natural as breathing, and Aiden let himself marvel for a moment at this ongoing bit of evidence about how this magnificent creature really was the brat from Lambert’s stories-- Lambert’s _family_.

No time now to get maudlin about that. Aiden stood, and held his chin up, and after a little bit of fussing and making of arrangements and pulling on a half-blindfold to keep his eye from freaking him out quite so much, he was ready to muster his courage and step through a portal, but what happened was that Ciri grabbed his arm and jerked him forward and when he stopped moving he was inside a large echoing room.

“What,” he said, off-balance, and blinked around the cool, echoing space.

“I told you,” Lambert said, which startled him-- he hadn’t known Lambert was there-- “Ciri does it a bit differently.”

It was a vast hall made of marble, with a distant roof pierced by many small windows along the uppermost ledge, and sunlight streamed in but lit the whole place diffusely from such a distance. Everything was inlays and dazzling decorative work. There were people there, murmuring and moving about, and Ciri still had her hand on his wrist.

No one seemed particularly surprised that they had just turned up here. Aiden pulled himself together. “Ah,” he said. “Where to?”

They were in Nilfgaard, and he’d been to Nilfgaard before, but he’d never been in the city proper, let alone in the palace. Ciri smiled at him, and kept hold of his hand to lead him across the wide open space, across the floor of the huge room.

He knew he should be taking in more information, but he’d gone-- inward, the way he used to-- no, there weren’t control spells, he couldn’t just stop paying attention and trust in the spells to pilot him around. If he didn’t pay attention he was going to fall over or something. He blinked hard, forcing himself to focus his good eye, but it kept blurring, not out of focus but out of not keeping up with their movement.

Lambert’s hand curled around his free elbow. “Hey,” he said, and Aiden remembered he wasn’t a prisoner, Lambert was here.

“Hey,” he said. They were still moving. They were in a hallway. Ciri let go of his hand and paused, turning back to look at him, and he managed to blink her into focus.

“We’re almost there,” she said. And it was-- she was unfamiliar, with her white-blond hair and her keen green eyes, but there was something familiar anyway in her regard, something kind, and the way her eyes darted briefly to Lambert and exchanged some information there--

“Okay,” he said, and checked in on himself, loosed his hand where it was gripping white-knuckled onto his sword belt (which was empty, he hadn’t brought his swords, they’d decided he shouldn’t), pulled his shoulders down out of his ears, loosened his breath in his chest. He nodded. “Okay.”

“How’s your eye?” Lambert murmured, loud enough that Ciri could probably hear.

Aiden shook his head slightly. “Sparks,” he said.

Ciri’s face creased into a frown. “Sparks,” she said. Then her eyebrows went back up. “Keira said you’d damaged it with potion toxicity, has it stayed bad?”

“Got worse,” Aiden said.

“She said she’d left you a way to contact her if that happened,” Ciri said. Oh, she looked like a regular pretty girl but she was both sharp _and_ intense.

“She did,” Aiden said. “My choice, I didn’t use it.”

Her eyes studied his face. It was more seen than he normally felt, slightly uncomfortably so. “May I ask why?”

“You can ask,” he said, surprised at being given a choice. It was a good call; it gave him more of a desire to be honest. She raised her eyebrows, indicating that she was asking. “I don’t entirely know, though,” he admitted, “so I didn’t say I’d answer.”

She laughed a bit ruefully, and held her hand out. “Shall we continue?”

He hesitated just a moment, then took her hand, and followed her down several more hallways, twisting and turning, knowing he’d need Lambert’s help to get back out.

* * *

The place Ciri was taking him was unmistakably a mage’s workshop. It had elaborate Nilfgaardian architecture and bright windows and of course bore no resemblance in layout, decór, or lighting to the basement Halmatia had kept him in, but there was an unmistakable air to it, and of course the workbenches arrayed with magical implements were a dead giveaway.

Strangely, it was almost a relief to see Keira there. In much the same outfit she’d been wearing when she’d turned up on the centipede hunt, and her hair styled just as severely, she didn’t resemble Halmatia at all really, and of course, the way she glanced up as they came in, and visibly forced herself to look away from Lambert, she was all herself.

Her eyes lit on Aiden, though, and unexpectedly, she said, “I have something for you, don’t let me forget.”

“Something,” Aiden said, lost, and then his attention sharpened as he remembered a fragment of conversation. “Is it my armor?”

“It might be,” Keira said, and grinned. “Whatever I found in that awful basement-- there are some things of yours, I’m sure of it, but when I really looked at it, the armor isn’t a complete set. So, some of it was missing.”

“Ah,” Aiden said, hope a little spark in his gut. “I had some _really_ good stuff on when he caught me.”

“Are we in a hurry?” Keira asked, glancing at Ciri.

“I can only stay a little while,” Ciri said regretfully.

“Of course,” Keira said. “So, we’ll have to paw through all that stuff later,” and she waved absently at a smallish bag that Aiden could tell had a lot of magic going on even without his bad eye uncovered, which could explain how even an incomplete set of armor would fit in there. Keira’s attention turned back to Aidens’s face. “Has the eye improved at all?”

“No,” Aiden said.

He didn’t want to elaborate. But after a moment, Ciri said, “He’s just mentioned to me that it had gotten worse. _Sparks_ , he said, though I’m not sure what he meant.”

Keira frowned. “You’d best come and sit, Aiden,” she said, and gestured at a chair. By some chance-- well, probably by design; Keira had seen Halmatia’s workshop, after all-- it bore no resemblance to the one she’d used to strap him into, but was instead a high backless stool. “I’d let you stand, to be more comfortable, but if I did that, I couldn’t reach.” And she managed a ghost of an amused smile.

“You could stand on the stool,” Aiden said, but he was joking, and took a seat. It wasn’t bad; there was no back to press against, nothing restraining him. She’d possibly measured, he realized; she was almost exactly his height when he sat here.

She smiled slightly; there was genuine amusement, but a kind of sadness underneath. _Fucking hell_ , he thought, but he didn’t have anything he could really feasibly say. “I had thought that if I had Cirilla do the actual casting of the spells it might be easier on you,” she said.

Aiden shook his head. “No need,” he said. He was still on-edge and fucked-up, but he needed to grow up about this. He made himself grin at her. “You’ve already broken my nose, I can stop waiting for the worst.”

That managed to puncture her carefully-composed distantly-sad fond-tolerant amusement, and she gave him a puzzled look. “How did I break your nose?” she demanded.

“With the door,” he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I mean, it’s been broken like. Ten or twelve times apart from that so it’s hardly novel, but it surely counts for the purposes of our acquaintance.”

“The door,” she said, baffled.

“You kicked the door shut straight on my face,” Aiden said. “Blood everywhere. So much for my cat-like reflexes!”

“I had no idea,” she said, stricken. “Aiden, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “Anyway Lambert’s been going easy on me about it, which was really the thing I was most worried about.”

“I admit I’m dying to know the story,” Ciri said.

“There’s no story,” Aiden said. “She was outside and I tried to follow, and she kicked the door shut and caught my face with it.”

“Hm,” Ciri said. She was very clearly suppressing amusement, but quite skillfully. “Well, I’d blocked out a little bit of time to be available, so even if I’m not directly needed, let’s pretend I am, so I’ve an excuse to stay.” And she reached behind her and caught Lambert’s arm, pulling him closer beside herself.

“Then if you’d like, I can explain what I’m doing as I go,” Keira said. She looked at Aiden. “I suppose I could do that anyway. Would it reassure you, or make it worse?”

Aiden realized he was making some sort of face. He hastily reset his features to as neutral as he could manage. “I don’t think it’ll matter,” he said honestly. He did not look at Lambert, whose face was doing-- something, he wasn’t going to look and see what. “Best to get on with it.” He reached up and untied the bandana he’d had folded around his head to cover the bad eye, blinking gingerly as the light coming in sent sparks skittering across his vision again.

But it stabilized, and he could see with it, well enough to pick out that Keira was wearing not only real makeup but cosmetic illusions again, subtle ones, covering the few little scars on her cheek but not a small one that showed where her lip had been split once and then healed. Her hair, too, was held into position with magic, though it wasn’t given any particular shape by it. Just held to keep from moving.

She smelled of soap, mostly, and of perfume, and with his mouth shut he couldn’t make out much beyond that except that there was a faint, tantalizing hint of Lambert’s scent, somehow. Like maybe her clothes had been washed with his, sure, but maybe more than that. Like maybe she was wearing a garment of his, under that ornate jacket. It was the barest hint of scent, though, and faded as she moved.

“This is a spell of scrying,” she said, her voice gone distant and clinical. “I’m going to use it to examine the attachment points between the artificial eye and Aiden’s body. I’ve only done a basic analysis before now, but my reading and Philippa’s notes have given me some idea of what to look for.” She held her hands a short distance apart, as if holding a heavy invisible ball about the size of a human head, and turned them together as if to show Ciri the ball’s face. Aiden blinked at it; he could see a structure there, could see a tracery of lines in a kind of regular shape, roughly hexagonal, internally very complex. His bad eye fuzzed a bit, but got it back into focus in a moment.

She turned to him, and he forced himself to sit still as she rolled up and then unfurled the spell structure onto his face. It was _incredibly_ hard not to flinch but he managed it, though his vision whited out in the bad eye.

He felt like he should be able to feel the spell; it was wrapped around his face now, too close to see, all around him. “Aiden,” Lambert said, concerned, and Aiden knew the Wolf could smell his fear, or maybe hear how hard his heart was beating as he staved off panic.

“It’s _fine_ , Lamb,” he managed to get out between gritted teeth. He was staring into the mage’s eyes, which were on the brown side of hazel in this light, intent but not unsympathetic. Her tits weren’t on display in this costume, which was too bad, but she also didn’t have illusions over them, or any kind of magic-- her body was shaped as it genuinely appeared, he rather thought, under the fitted jacket.

“I am sorry,” she murmured absently, “this must look alarming from your perspective.” She gestured, as if pulling, and an illusion projected itself into the air in front of Aiden’s face, almost too close for him to focus.

He could see it with both eyes, the magical underpinnings with his left and the illusion with his right. It clearly showed the faceted surface of the gemstone, showed that it wasn’t evenly faceted all the way around but was shaped, and there was a tangle of something coming off the back of it, as well as little-- lines?-- coming off the sides. Attachment points to the muscles of his eye socket, his mind filled in, as he inwardly flinched away from thinking about it too hard.

“So this,” Keira said, holding the illusion steady with one splayed hand, and then tracing her finger along some of the lines of it, “is the gemstone material, and this is some sort of tissue bonded to it, and this is-- I think the problem is that somehow, some of this is human tissue, which--” She widened her splayed hand, making the illusion wider, and made a grim face. “You can see this has deteriorated and healed strangely, because it’s-- I think Witcher bodies are very good at regenerating, but the fact that it was clearly not Aiden’s tissue initially means that the potion damaged it. I’m not sure his body can heal it, though it’s making an impressive go at it.”

“But she started with human tissue, somehow,” Ciri said. She looked at Aiden, past the illusion. “Do you know anything about it?”

“No,” Aiden said, “she-- I was under heavy spells for most of it, and she-- I think she was trying things to affect my memory. I know that there were other people involved, but I couldn’t identify any of them. Some of them may have been-- like me. Prisoners,” he clarified. “But I don’t-- I don’t know that.”

“There was evidence she’d been keeping at least one human like you,” Keira said. “I found-- well, I think I found his skull.” She grimaced. “It’s possible that she used his tissue for this, or at least-- well, I can’t speculate, really.”

“Well,” Aiden said, “what’s the prognosis here, though? Are you gonna take this thing out?”

She turned the illusion slowly, looking at it with a soft expression of deep concentration. It was something akin to the look Lambert occasionally wore as he was collating the data in his journals, and Aiden’s fluttery panic, deeply-swallowed, shifted slightly as he noted the resemblance. It wasn’t… reassuring exactly, but. He wasn’t sure what it was making him feel.

“No,” she said slowly. “Unless you want-- but I think, firstly, that I can probably repair some of the damage, with some targeted healing spells, and secondly, if we remove this implant we run the risk of your eye socket deforming if it sits empty. If we leave this, then we can construct the replacement to be the same size, and know it will fit. I know it’s uncomfortable, but I do plan to work quickly.” She darted him a more direct look. “But, of course, it’s up to you. We can remove it, see what your rapid healing ability makes of it, and then see what there is to work with.”

She was genuinely asking, and had an unmistakable air of competence that made him believe that it truly would be all right for him to choose either course. Was she influencing his mind? He couldn’t help the reflexive worry, but as he thought about it, he could feel that there wasn’t any pressure from either direction.

“If it can be no worse than it was before,” he said, “I’d rather have something than nothing, you’re not wrong. But-- no potions.” He meant the last as a sort of question, and she understood.

“No potions until we can get the new one in,” she said, a touch regretfully.

He squinted skeptically at her. “But you’re planning on the new one being able to handle potion toxicity?” He hadn’t expected that.

She blinked. “Of course,” she said. “You’re a Witcher, not being able to take potions is like-- well, you _have_ to be able to take them, that’s all there is to that.”

He was too floored by her sensible tone to have a response, so he fell silent as Keira pointed out various anatomical features to Ciri, who seemed raptly attentive. Lambert came up and stood just behind him, and Aiden reached back blindly, not daring to move his head. Lambert took the outstretched hand and held it between both of his.

“At any rate,” Keira concluded at last, “I think I can repair the damage here, and here, with some healing spells, at least to get the eye as functional and comfortable as it was before. I doubt I can improve it beyond that, however.”

“That’d be fine,” Aiden said.

* * *

Ciri could hardly be blamed, she thought, for losing track of time, especially as she’d given Luliana the morning off-- she’d grown too accustomed, perhaps, to being baby-sat by her competent assistant, who kept track of time and knew all the understated ways to clue her in about upcoming appointments and such. Watching Keira heal Aiden’s eye was enthralling, and watching Lambert be quietly soft with him was another kind of-- reassurance, she supposed. So she wound up staying, and once the spells had begun to settle in, everyone relaxed, and Keira opened up the bag she’d brought and began to take items out-- some were additional bits of magical workshop paraphernalia she’d brought from her own workshop and Philippa’s, and then the rest was a series of things she’d taken from Halmatia’s basement.

Including, to Aiden’s fleeting delight and then disappointment, a partial set of armor that was not, in fact, his. It was a full set of shoulder armor, of quite good quality and make and in decent repair, but it wasn’t his.

“Try it on anyway,” Lambert said, “you can still use it.”

“Heavy shoulder armor isn’t my _style_ ,” Aiden said, but held his arms out. “I can’t move while this is going, you put it on me. See if it fits me, anyway.”

Ciri and Lambert both set to putting the armor onto Aiden, where it looked incongruous over the light jacket and shirt he was wearing. As it happened, with slight adjustments, it fit him beautifully. “Temerian, maybe,” Ciri said, running a finger along the decorative etching on the steel of the shoulder cap.

“Nah,” Lambert said, “this is Korviri work, here,” and indicated the tooling on the hardened leather. “This fits all right, but it’d fit better over a breast-and-back section.”

“Well,” Aiden said, “obviously, I’d have to get one.”

“I don’t know,” Lambert said, “your old set was just the breast-and-back, with no shoulder protection at all. Maybe you should go to the other extreme.”

Aiden laughed at him, managing not to move from where Keira was still occupied working on his optic nerve or whatever she’d said she was doing. Keira was watching them all in amusement, clearly only needing a small portion of her attention to keep the spell active.

“I’ll take the shirt off too,” Aiden said. “Time to cover my arms and nothing else. Bare belly, to distract my attackers.”

“Oh, in daylight that’d be a good way to _blind_ them,” Lambert said, and they all fell about laughing as Keira paused between spells so Aiden was free to get up. He took the armor back off, took off his jacket, untucked his shirt and rolled it up to expose his belly, and put the armor back on, then stood and posed ridiculously as everyone fell about laughing.

“Still not as pale as Geralt, though,” Ciri pointed out, reflecting that someone had clearly spent a lot of time during his formative years defusing tension in his peer group by being a clown. Well, it was good that he was recovered enough to go back to old coping mechanisms, she thought.

“Ooh he’s like the driven snow,” Lambert said, briefly affecting an archaic accent Ciri vaguely thought must have belonged to one or more of the instructors or old Witchers at Kaer Morhen pre-pogrom; all of them were prone to dipping into it for various poetic expressions. Whoever it was must have been a storyteller, and still shone through in occasional poetic phrases in all of their speech.

“Really,” Aiden said skeptically, hands on hips. He managed to cut a figure simultaneously ridiculous and magnificent like this, his broad shoulders exaggerated by the armor and making his narrow waist look tiny all out of proportion. He was quite pale, but Ciri wasn’t lying, he wasn’t anywhere near Geralt’s albino hue-- he was just a pale light-skinned man.

“You look like a fucking idiot,” Lambert said, when he could draw breath after the renewed laughing fit Aiden had just provoked by teasingly flexing his arm muscles like a prize boxer warming up for a match. To be fair, Aiden did have beautiful arms, lithely muscled.

Ciri, beside Lambert, was still laughing too hard to speak when someone cleared his throat genteelly in the doorway. “My lady,” a man said, and she was distracted enough to give an almost-guilty little start.

“Yes,” she said, wheeling around with hastily-gathered composure.

It was Morvran, of course it was Morvran, she was supposed to lunch with him at midday and get his report on-- She darted a guilty glance at the window. Oh, she _was_ late. Luliana would never have let this happen, but she’d given Luliana the rest of the day off, the more fool she.

Morvran had a strangely gentle expression on his face, possibly amusement. “General Voorhis,” she said, scrupulously correct with him as ever; his severe clothing made it easy for her to forcibly yank herself back into her accustomed role. She had realized early on that if she were too familiar with him, candidate for her hand as he was, then she’d be seen as a wild Nordling with no sense of decorum. For his part, he’d always been perfectly gracious to her, yet not chilly, and he’d been good about discreetly assisting her in matters of etiquette without being seen to do so. She didn’t dislike him, so he had that going for him.

Geralt liked him, mildly, so he had that going for him too. Mildly, was the key-- Geralt would seek out his company in a crowd for conversation, and would make the I-enjoy-talking-to-you face while they talked, but crucially he had not attempted to sleep with Morvran, as far as she knew, and that was important to her for reasons she wasn’t entirely going to unpack and examine.

Morvran gave her a polite courtesy, as due her station given his station, and said, “I thought I had best come myself to see what kept you, rather than send a haughty messenger.” His expression was well-controlled, but his gaze lingered with some interest on Aiden, who had stopped posing and was just standing in the middle of the room with an aspect that made it crystal-clear he was adamantly refusing to be ashamed of himself. “Is this a family matter?”

Despite Aiden’s state of relative undress and current lack of swords, he could not have been more clearly a Witcher, six feet four at least and in armored boots and reinforced trousers. And pauldrons. And with his shirt tucked up to show off his scarred, leanly-muscled midriff.

Next to him, Lambert was wearing his swords, to underscore the point; his medallion was on display as normal, and he was giving Morvran a terrifyingly keen look.

“It is,” Ciri said. “General, this is my uncle, Lambert of the School of the Wolf, and Aiden, a brother Witcher.”

Morvran made them a polite courtesy as well, and Ciri’s newly-practiced eye clocked that he was giving Lambert the degree of respect that would be due him as her uncle. Not bad. Lambert just nodded awkwardly. Aiden didn’t move his body in any direction, but he raised his chin, a partial nod.

“And this is Keira Metz, a notable mage, lately of the Lodge of Sorceresses,” Ciri finished. “This is General Morvran Voorhis.”

Morvran and Keira exchanged correct Nilfgaardian courtesies, and Morvran turned back to Ciri, his disciplined facade showing no hint of amusement any longer. “I assume you have been detained by important matters, then,” he said, completely, enviably straight-faced. “Shall I arrange for luncheon to be sent here, and for our meeting to be rescheduled?”

Ciri glanced over at Keira, who gestured in a sort of go-ahead way with one hand, then looked back at Morvran. “No,” she said, “no, I-- I’m finished here, I can--”

“We’re very nearly done altogether,” Keira said. “I just have to cast the last spell, and let it sit for about five to seven minutes.”

“Ah,” Morvran said pleasantly, “then perhaps we could all take our refreshment together?” He cocked his head, a startlingly endearing gesture, smiling slightly. “Only-- I have so enjoyed knowing Geralt, I would quite like to know more of your family, my lady.”

Ciri laughed, a little surprised by how pleased that made her. “My uncle Lambert is a bit more of an acquired taste than Geralt,” she said, putting her elbow delicately into Lambert’s ribs. He’d been so subdued today, though, it was almost distressing. Maybe Morvran would wind him up entertainingly.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean,” Lambert said, obligingly prickly.

“I look forward to finding out,” Morvran said

“Why don’t you go ahead,” Keira said, though her tone was slightly odd, “and I’ll just finish this last spell on Aiden, and the two of us can follow along in a moment?”

“Then I shall go and make arrangements,” Morvran said graciously.

Ciri made a snap decision. “I’ll come with you,” she said, and threaded her elbow through Lambert’s to tug him along.

* * *

After the others left the room, Aiden turned back to Keira, who was smiling slightly to herself. “Voorhis is the front-runner in the race for Ciri’s hand in marriage,” she said, quietly enough that Lambert wouldn’t hear it.

“Really?” Aiden said, and craned his neck to look after them, though he knew they’d be out of sight. He hadn’t really registered much beyond Nilfgaardian and vaguely smug looking but sort of young.

“Mm-hmm,” she said, and smiled mysteriously to herself. “Best to sit and let me do the last spell now, so we can catch up to the others.”

“Oh, of course,” Aiden said, and sat on the stool. Keira stood at the workbench for a moment, fiddling with the last magical device she’d pulled out of her pack-- it was some sort of stand, upon which she was to arrange the agates in their little beakers of growth medium fluid, with some kind of magical current running through them, to grow the tissue for the eyes. Whatever it was, it had been making Aiden’s medallion buzz.

Her posture had shifted; perhaps she was nervous at being alone with him again. “Hey,” he said quietly, “listen, I don’t want to make this a thing but I really, really am sorry about the other day, the whole thing-- I didn’t say what I meant at all.”

“It’s nothing,” Keira said, shaking her head a little. Her posture was strange and tense, but notably it wasn’t the same as the fearful posture she’d had when he’d frightened her, that time she’d come vulnerable expecting Lambert. Her heart rate had picked up and she suddenly smelled distressed, but not afraid exactly, not like the other time.

“Is it?” Aiden said, perplexed.

She turned, smiling, controlled, quite at odds with her pulse and scent. “Just let me cast this last spell,” she said, “and we can talk afterward.”

Her face was fixed in a small smile, her eyes strangely wild and intent, and Aiden shoved to his feet suddenly, alarmed-- that wasn’t Keira. That wasn’t a Keira expression. That was something else. He’d seen her faking not being frightened and this was something else.

“Hey,” he shouted, turning suddenly toward the door. “Hey!”

Keira flung the spell at him, and it wrapped around him with a horrible familiarity-- it was a control spell, it was _the same_ control spell, it was Halmatia’s spell, and it hooked around him and sank its claws into his mind.

“No,” he shouted, strangled as it clamped his jaw shut. Not this. Not this.

He heard a roaring noise and managed to swing himself around as he struggled, and saw in horror that Keira had opened a portal. He could also see that she was as unwilling as he was; she was struggling just as he was, wrapped up in something like the control spell on him.

The control spells moved her back away from the portal, preparing for someone to come through it, or something, and Aiden wrestled furiously at his own control spells and did the only thing he could think of:

He ran at Keira and tackled her through the portal, sending both of them through it to the other side, because whatever plan held by whoever was strong enough to remotely cast control spells onto a powerful mage was a plan he would do anything in his power to thwart.

They came out into an outdoor space somewhere significantly colder, and Aiden hit the ground and rolled off of Keira, releasing her and coming up and all in one movement wriggling out of the control spell. He was a little surprised it had worked, but then, it had only been one layer; Halmatia had kept him wrapped in so many overlapping layers, some more effective than others, constantly re-cast, and he had so much practice at wriggling out of them. It turned out one layer wasn’t much of a challenge after all.

Keira sat up dazedly, but quite clearly from her odd uncoordinated movements was still under someone else’s control, and fighting it. Aiden hopped to his feet and took in their surroundings.

The portal had snapped shut, and they were in a courtyard surrounded by derelict buildings, and there were-- ten, fifteen, more men there, men with mismatched bits of armor and weaponry, unwashed scent, smell of booze-- hired thugs, bandits. And a woman-- a mage-- a _deeply familiar_ mage. Reddish hair, plaited, ornate dress.

“Oh, I know you,” Aiden said, recognizing her two ways at once-- that was Philippa Eilheart, he was absolutely certain, but he also remembered her in one of the blank spaces in his memory from somewhere in that basement, and she was putting out her hand to cast a spell.

He cast a _Quen_ on himself and launched himself at the nearest bandit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha I promise I'll do the next update soon!!! i figured a cliffhanger was a good way to show that the story's really making progress, LOL.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  ~~so the action sequence is too long for the cliffhanger to totally resolve! it should resolve, at least immediately, in the *next* section, which I'll post probably Monday or Tuesday, so you can decide then if you want to wait and read it all. The final-final resolution will take a bit longer though!~~  
>  so anyway, this chapter is gonna end on a cliffhanger, _again_ , sorry!, so take care of yourself! I hadn't really anticipated how much stress everyone in the world is currently under when I wrote this, lolsob, so I hadn't thought about how everyone's tolerance for suspense is probably at a pretty low ebb currently. No shame, and I won't let you down, but it's not resolved yet.  
> HA next chapter up. The cliffhanger is mostly resolved.

Lambert wouldn’t have left Aiden there except that Ciri had taken him by the elbow, absently, and when he made to free himself, Keira said, “No, go ahead, Lambert, I’ll talk to you there,” and the shock of hope he got from her willingly offering to talk dissolved his objection.

“It’s fine, Lamb,” Aiden said. “I can, er, just-- put my clothes back on.” He was clearly working very hard not to show any embarrassment at having been caught clowning. He did a very good impression of shamelessness, but it wasn’t entirely flawless. 

Lambert bit his lip so as not to laugh at him-- he wouldn’t, in front of this stuffed Nilfgaardian shirt-- and nodded, then turned to let Ciri tug him down the hallway.

“So you are one of the brotherhood of the Wolves, then,” Voorhis said to Lambert, and Lambert bristled a little, sensing mockery. “Alongside Geralt, the White Wolf. What color wolf are you, or does it not work that way?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Ciri put in for him, and patted Lambert’s arm reassuringly. He guessed she was trying to tell him not to get prickly at this guy. 

“I’m just Lambert,” Lambert said. “Only dumb assholes get fancy ballads written about them with poetic names and shit.”

“Ah,” Voorhis said sagely, nodding. “Seems reasonable. Although, perhaps I am mistranslating the word, but I do not think I would describe your Geralt as an asshole? I thought it indicated an unpleasant person?”

“He can be pretty unpleasant,” Lambert pointed out.

“I suppose my experience with him has been limited,” Voorhis said diplomatically, and Lambert itched to poke holes in his composure, but he could feel Ciri’s grip on his arm going tighter. 

“He’s addicted to drama,” Lambert said. “Maybe he ain’t had the chance to get into it here.”

“That’s possible,” Voorhis said, and gave Lambert a sidelong, almost surreptitious grin. 

“Has he put his dick in anybody lately?” Lambert asked. “That’s usually his preferred flavor of drama.”

Voorhis hastily reverted his glance forward and schooled his features into composure, though a twitch of his mouth betrayed his amusement. He wasn’t so bad, Lambert thought-- he’d assumed the man was old, but looking at him closer, he didn’t even really have those lines next to his mouth that regular humans got in their late twenties. He was young, maybe even as young as Ciri; he was dressed like someone’s grandmother, but that was just how Nilfgaardians seemed to dress. “I do not believe I’d be on the list of people who’d know of such matters,” Voorhis said, consummately diplomatic. 

“Ah,” Lambert said, and looked at Ciri. “What about _you_? I’d meant to follow up on that.”

“I have not put my dick in anybody lately,” Ciri said solemnly. “Lambert, please do not tell me any more detail than I already have about the adventures of _your_ dick, of late, either.”

“I mean,” Lambert said, “I don’t think there’s any mystery there.” He paused, trying to remember what he knew of Nilfgaardian culture. “Say, Voorhis was it?”

Voorhis turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. “That is my family name, yes,” he said. “It is appropriate to use for me.”

“Yeah,” Lambert said, “good. Hey, is it a crime in Nilfgaard to put your dick into a man?”

Voorhis’s eyebrows twitched very slightly, and he looked ahead. “Ah,” he said, “it is if the man does not _want_ you to put your, ah, dick into him.” He made a small gesture, nonspecific, a one-handed shrug, and continued, “It is a crime to put your, ehm, your dick, into _anybody_ who does not want it put into them.”

“No, no, if he’s into it,” Lambert clarified.

“Into,” Voorhis repeated. “You mean, he likes it.”

“Yeah,” Lambert said. He _did_ like this kid; the unflappability didn’t seem to be a facade after all. 

“Then no,” Voorhis said, “it is not a crime in and of itself. There could be other, related crimes, such as if you do it in public, or for example in a consecrated place where such things are forbidden, but in that case it does not matter whose dick goes into whom or what specifically occurs, it is more the matter in general that is forbidden.”

“Good to know,” Lambert said. “Good to know.” 

“ _I_ could have told you that,” Ciri said, a touch waspishly. Hm, that was a data point; she was sensitive about this man’s opinion, possibly-- and, she did seem interested in his company. He’d given her an out, earlier, with the offer to reschedule, but she’d made the choice to come with him. And he seemed genuinely interested in the proceedings, rather than just trying to toady up to whatever the Crown Princess was interested in. Lambert would have to find out from Geralt who this guy was, later. 

“Listen,” Lambert said, “I dunno a whole lot about how this works but I know that it’s an uncle’s job to be embarrassing to his niece sometimes. Think of it this way, everyone can marvel at how normal you turned out despite my best efforts.” And he gave her a toothy grin.

“It is no trouble for me to explain the finer points of our culture to your uncle,” Voorhis said to Ciri. “Perhaps he could even return the favor, and give me some insights into yours.”

“Oho,” Lambert said. “You wanna know what kind of barbarians you’re saddled with, here?” 

Ciri opened her mouth to say something, but Lambert stopped dead with a frown, hearing a faint sound. A shout? He looked back the way they’d come. It was too far to be sure, now, and there were echoes and other people all around making noises, but-- 

“Did you hear something?” Ciri asked, quick and quiet.

His medallion buzzed faintly, distantly. “Portal,” he said. “Who’s authorized to make portals here?”

“No one,” Ciri said. “Can’t, there are protections-- ahh, except in that workshop.”

“I got a bad feeling,” Lambert said, and turned to run back down the hall, but Ciri grabbed his arm and Voorhis’s and Blinked them there. Obviously, the protections didn’t extend against her.

The workshop was empty, but a swirl of dust and magical emanations still hung where a portal had just closed. 

“Can you tell where it went?” Lambert asked.

Ciri shook her head. “Not I,” she said. “But-- I know someone who can,” and she turned and ran down the hallway.

* * *

“Well that’s not what I had in mind _at all_ ,” Philippa said, hands on hips, gazing narrowly with her head tilted at Aiden, who was holding an _Yrden_ sign on her as hard as he could with one hand while brandishing the sword he’d yanked away from the first bandit with the other. He’d killed two of them so far, but there were easily a dozen more, and Keira was just standing there with her arms at her sides, dazed and twitching in a way that was horribly familiar to Aiden-- he knew she was struggling against the control spells, and it wasn’t heartening that this was all she could manage. Philippa was giving him a critical up-and-down. “You look fucking ridiculous,” she said. “What are you dressed up as?”

“Oh,” Aiden said, doing his best to pretend casualness, as if this Sign wasn’t taking most of his concentration, “you know, trying to keep up with this year’s fashions.”

Philippa looked unimpressed, but then asked her real question. “How are you immune to the control spells now?”

“You don’t think I learned anything in three years?” Aiden said. He hadn’t committed to using a damaging _Yrden_ on her when he first threw it, wanting instead to hold her until he could figure out what was going on, and now he didn’t have the energy to kick this one up. The bandits were confusedly gathering themselves, waiting for Philippa’s command, he realized. They’d been about to go through that portal. She’d been about to send a bunch of bandits straight into the middle of the palace in Nilfgaard-- it was two dozen of them, he realized, seeing more of them milling around in the shadows of the half-collapsed ruin.

This was Novigrad, he thought-- he hadn’t been here in years but no other city smelled quite like it. 

She was waiting for him to drop the _Yrden_ , Aiden knew, and this time she’d use a much stronger control spell on him. He was absolutely not going to let that happen. But he was still hesitant to step inside that circle and kill her, and he wasn’t sure he could, anyway. “Keira,” he said, “baby, you _have_ to fight. You just have to get yourself under it and push.”

“Why should she be on your side?” Philippa asked. “You’ve replaced her in her true love’s affections.” She seemed amused by this, and Aiden reconsidered attempting to kill her.

“I didn’t ask her to rescue me, she wanted to do that,” Aiden said. “What, do you think Ciri’s going to assume Keira changed her mind after all the effort she’s invested in me? She’s just going to think ah, Keira went crazy and abducted that Witcher she could just have easily left rotting in a basement? Is that really your master plan, here?”

“That could not more clearly _not_ be what I was trying to do,” Philippa said, rolling her eyes. Her eyes were magic, he could see that-- actually his artificial eye was working better than it had been even before the potion, so whatever Keira had done was an improvement already, though it hurt like he’d been stabbed. 

The bandits were watching all of this with great curiosity and some wariness, but didn’t seem eager to attack either of them, muttering among themselves about what they were and weren’t being paid for. Keira was still standing there like a sleepwalker. He couldn’t believe she wasn’t fighting harder, but he didn’t want to draw attention to her by saying so. 

“Oh,” Aiden realized, “you were going to make sure I was dead, though, because I can tell everyone you were in that basement with Halmatia experimenting on me.” 

“Well,” she said, “you can’t deny how inconvenient you are to me.” She shrugged. “How long can you hold this, by the way? It’s impressive.”

“You know damn well how long I can hold it,” Aiden said, because the edges of the Sign were fading already. She was several hundred years old, far stronger than he was, and canny to boot; she clearly already had her next round of control spells ready to go. “Keira!”

Keira twitched, shuddered, and then suddenly threw a lightning bolt at the ground directly at his feet. He had to let the _Yrden_ go as he dodged, but he threw himself at Philippa to do the best he could, and she had to scramble to parry him. The parry flung him sprawling across the ground but he was used to that sort of thing and came up swinging, several bandits between him and the sorceress so her return volley of spells all missed, stunning and stupefying several of the bandits as Aiden scrambled. 

He flung an _Aard_ at the wall behind Philippa, knocking several supporting beams out and making debris rain down so that she had to scramble to relocate herself. She screamed at the bandits to attack him, and he managed to get another _Quen_ up just in time to keep from getting knifed in the kidneys. 

The shield breaking blew the bandits back a couple of steps, and gave him some room for sword-work but also meant Philippa had a clear line of sight on him, which was bad. He fought and dodged and killed several bandits, hampered somewhat by trying to keep one of them between himself and the mage at all times. 

He was under the dangerously unstable structure of the half-fallen building, by now, and he knew that was a danger, but he was counting on _Quen_ to see him through if the thing fell down, because he needed the shelter the remaining beams could provide. Keira was visibly fighting, sparks shooting from her hands but landing nowhere in particular as she struggled wildly against Philippa’s hold. It meant the bandits were avoiding her, though, which was good, because there was sweet fuck-all Aiden could do for her in all this scrum. 

He was a bit out of practice, it turned out, and the unfamiliar sword didn’t help, but two dozen bandits wasn’t really all that hard work for a Witcher with this many distractions on his side in this kind of terrain. He took some minor damage, especially since he’d forgotten he wasn’t actually wearing useful armor-- the shoulder armor did help, but he really would have been better off with _anything at all_ covering his midriff, and gauntlets would’ve been _really_ great. But he did what he could with what he had, and it wasn’t long before he’d killed or incapacitated the bandits. 

It was a mixed success, however, because without them milling around, it was just him and Keira and Philippa. And Philippa had solidified her hold on Kiera enough that the next sparks she threw missed Aiden by such a narrow margin that he had to roll over against the searing burn of lightning against his arm. 

“Ow, fuck,” he yelled, and threw an _Yrden_ at both Philippa and Keira. 

It got Philippa, and missed Keira, who was shaking all over but still raised her hands toward him. “Shit,” he said, locking eyes with her. She was wild-eyed, clearly struggling, and he recognized that expression, what it had felt like from the inside; her nose had begun to bleed and he could only imagine how intense the spells Philippa had put on her must be. 

“Do you think she’ll spare you?” Philippa asked. “Is she strong enough to fight me off? This is far more entertaining than I’d thought.”

Aiden gritted his teeth and scraped the very bottom of the barrel where his Sign-casting ability lived just to get a _Quen_ up, just in time for Keira to suddenly gesture violently. Instead of lightning, she suddenly snatched Aiden up from the ground and threw him into the wreckage of the building with an invisible hand of force. Aiden had to let go of the _Yrden_ as he smashed brutally through the few remaining supports and the building came down with a smashing groaning rumble.

There followed a brief interlude of intense chaos and some heavy blows; Aiden curled himself as small as he could manage and squeezed one last pathetic _Quen_ under the one that had exploded on impact, and when everything came to a halt he was alive, ears ringing, lungs functioning. He lay still a moment, battered and shocked, then tentatively began to check that his limbs were attached. He still had the hilt of the sword in one hand but the blade of it was snapped off about a foot down. He could inflate his lungs all the way, but there was something between him and the open sky. He wasn’t crushed, but he wasn’t free. Moving slowly, he sat up and collected himself, and then went still as he heard the sorceress’s voice.

“Oh,” Philippa said, muffled and distant but easily-enough heard, “oh Keira! It seems you saw true after all!”

Keira’s answer wasn’t decipherable, or perhaps it was that she made a sound more than a word. Aiden could smell blood, a lot of it, but a lot of that was likely the two dozen bandits he’d just slaughtered. He was not in great shape, himself; his _Quen_ hadn’t held and he had some pretty bad bruising that might be broken bones in one of his legs and maybe one of his arms too, besides the various slashes he’d taken to the abdomen, and he was in no shape to fight. Philippa being alive and talking was bad, because that meant she could get a control spell onto him if she saw him.

So he moved quietly, quietly, picking his way through the jumbled debris to peer out where there was light. He couldn't be entirely silent, but there was still a bit of settling in the demolished building, so he tried to keep his movements within that range of sounds.

He managed to get to where he could see Philippa. The mage was standing, hands on hips, looking at something. If it was Keira, why wasn’t Keira fighting?

“Well,” Philippa said. “What do you think, did that kill the Witcher?” She looked around. “This does seem a good scene for the story I’ll give. A shame none of my hired help survived, but then, I hadn’t paid them yet, so it’s just as well. To be honest it’s not really a shame.”

She gestured languidly with one hand, preparing a spell. “I don’t think I need to do anything else, I think this will all work out just fine. I’m sorry, Keira, that is a terrible fate for you, but you can console yourself that your prophetic vision was as true as apparently the rest of your heart.”

Keira wasn’t speaking, but she was making a sound-- was she sobbing? If so, it was a weak sort of sound. That wasn’t good. Fuck, that wasn’t good. Aiden took an analytical look at the various debris between him and any kind of exit, and considered his odds against Philippa. 

Just as he was coming up with a strategy-- not much of one, but he had maybe enough strength to at least get a damaging _Yrden_ on the sorceress if he could just squeeze out between those two cracked beams-- he heard the unmistakable sound of a portal opening. 

* * *

“No, the mage who was in here earlier certainly didn’t open this portal,” the stooped little Nilfgaardian man said. “Metz, was that her name? No. She had a kind of-- ah, I cannot describe it to you, but I would recognize the scent of her magic. This was someone else. Someone-- Mm, I shall have to explore that more. But there is more scent of this other magic, in this room. Something came in--”

“Philippa,” Geralt said. He’d been summoned from wherever the hell he’d been, and had his hand clamped around Lambert’s shoulder for some reason. Lambert had given up trying to shake him off. 

“I do not know this Philippa,” the Nilfgaardian mage said. “But there is magic on this set of tools, the purpose of which I cannot divine.”

“Those are the things Keira brought,” Lambert said, “but they were from Philippa.” He was gently vibrating with the thwarted desire to chase, to hunt, to kill, and Geralt was keeping him from crowding the mage. It had taken him a while to calm down enough to notice that this was what Geralt was doing, and he wasn’t happy about it but it was probably justified. 

Aiden and Keira had been missing for nearly ten minutes already and they were not much closer to finding them. “So where’d the portal _go_ ,” Lambert said, not for the first time.

“I will tell you when I know,” the mage said, fixing him with a keen look. “Meanwhile, I can tell you that the magic on this tool here is a spell designed to make someone touch it, so that it can trigger another spell. I cannot tell you what the second spell was, however-- it attached to its subject, I believe, and remained in effect, and so there is now no trace of it.”

Suddenly Lambert’s medallion buzzed, and he could tell from Geralt’s reaction that his had, too. “Portal,” Lambert said, just as a portal ripped its way across the near end of the room, sending them all reeling backward. 

An owl came through the portal and it flashed shut immediately. The owl careened through the room, nearly crashing into Ciri, and Geralt put his hand out and grabbed it from midair. 

It changed, in his grasp, and became a woman, and immediately the woman grabbed him by the shoulders. “Geralt!” she gasped, using his bulk to haul herself upright.

She was in some disarray, blood on her face and chest, hair coming loose from plaits. “Philippa,” Geralt said, not warmly. 

“Come-- come quick, there’s been-- something terrible,” Philippa said breathlessly.

“Your magic’s all in this room,” Geralt said, unimpressed. “What’s going on?”

“It wasn’t supposed to work like that,” Philippa said. “Keira did something-- anyway the Cat Witcher has gone berserk and I’m-- I had to run--”

“Fuck,” Lambert said. Most Witchers’ mutations gave them varying sorts of extreme reactions to large amounts of adrenaline, and Aiden was one of the batch of Cats who had a berserker-state adrenaline response given adequate provocation. 

Geralt looked at Lambert. “Aiden’s one of those?” he said grimly.

“Yeah,” Lambert said, a little reluctantly. “I mean-- not just anything would set him off.”

“I didn’t see what happened,” Philippa said. “But they came through a portal to my workshop and he was going after her and I don’t know why. I tried to stop him but he was-- he’s-- even berserk, he’s formidable.”

“Uh, _especially_ berserk,” Lambert said, slowly. Something about this didn’t read right, to him. “But you’re a mage, couldn’t you just--”

“Witchers are incredibly dangerous,” Philippa said. “I couldn’t _just_ anything.” She found her feet, pushed away from Geralt, and brushed herself off. 

“How dangerous is he when he’s berserk?” Ciri asked, eyes moving between Geralt and Lambert with an air of wary calculation.

“Uh,” Lambert said, “you-- listen, I don’t think Vesemir had to explain what adrenaline can do on top of mutations, to you, but it, ah.” He shook his head.

“He wouldn’t kill Metz, surely,” Voorhis said, mildly startled.

“He might well kill _me_ ,” Lambert said, “and if he did he might not even know he’d done it.”

“You two don’t go berserk,” Ciri said, frowning, clearly meaning him and Geralt.

“Aiden’s a Cat,” Geralt said. “The Cat school has gone through a number of variations in their mutagens, and it depends heavily which generation he was.”

“We have to go try to save Keira,” Philippa said.

“If you’d wanted to save Keira, you’d’ve done it right then,” Lambert said. “It’s going to be too late now unless Keira’s immobilized him, in which case us turning up won’t matter either way.” His own adrenaline was kicking up, now, and he was thinking maybe it was time to test Philippa’s survival instincts.

“It was your portal,” the Nilfgaardian mage said to Philippa. “It took them to… Novigrad.”

“Can you explain why that is?” Ciri asked Philippa, calm and collected. 

Philippa’s expression was dead earnest. “I do not know what Keira’s intentions were,” she said. “She had arranged with me that I would build in an escape route for her-- she was nervous, about all of this, and she had something she was planning but I do not entirely know what it was.”

“I see,” Ciri said. 

“I don’t know if you realized,” Philippa said, drawing a little closer with a conspiratory tone, “how differently she spoke when you were present than when you were not.”

“Outis,” Ciri said, completely disinterested in what Philippa was saying, “can you take us to Novigrad?”

The mage blinked, considering. “Shall I accompany? Only, my training is fairly--”

“I would like you to accompany us,” Ciri said, “but I understand you are not trained in combat.” She looked at Voorhis, gaze steely but appealing, and the young soldier raised his chin in acknowledgement.

“I will see to his protection,” Voorhis said, almost painfully earnest. 

“Oh,” Philippa said, “let me-- I can make sure we come out in a safe area, I know the neighborhood.”

“No, thank you,” Ciri said, and her words were polite but her tone was purely efficient. She looked at Geralt and Lambert. “Quen up, gentlemen.” And Lambert watched her make the shape of the Sign herself, and cast it.

“Ah,” he said, a momentary jolt of delight penetrating his overall keyed-up aggression, “Keira taught you.”

“She did,” Ciri said, giving him a fraction of a smile before her attention turned to a razor focus on the matter at hand. “Now.”

The Nilfgaardian mage cast the portal, and Geralt kept hold of Philippa and shoved her through. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for violent injury aftermath, but I haven't described anything in particularly vivid detail-- I rather think we've had enough sensationalized violence, hm? -- but it's undeniably gory.

The portal had definitely been Philippa leaving, so Aiden felt no need to be quiet any longer. He shoved his way out of the debris with almost frantic haste: he could hear Keira making only small distressed noises, and he knew something very bad had happened to her. 

He had to scrape his way painfully out under an enormous fallen beam, but he made it out minus only a few little bits of skin, and immediately was able to pick up a new sword from the corpse of one of the bandits he’d killed earlier. The momentary satisfaction of that was fleeting, however, because now he could see Keira.

She was at the edge of the wreckage, and looked almost as though she were just standing there, but-- “Oh no,” Aiden said, and broke into a limping run on his, fuck, _very_ badly injured leg. “Oh no, oh fuck--”

She was horribly alert and aware, looking up at him with choked horror as he skidded to a stop. Her hands were clutched across her midsection, and the jagged end of a beam was protruding, horribly, between her hands. He remembered, with sudden sickening clarity, about the dream she’d woken sobbing from the sole time she’d let her guard down in his presence. 

“Fuck,” he said again, trying to kick his brain into motion so he could do something besides stand here shaking with pain and horror and staring uselessly at her. 

“Please,” she said faintly, “please don’t-- leave me like this--”

That did the trick, jolting him out of his horrified paralysis-- did she really think he would just walk away? “ _Keira_ ,” he said, “I won’t. Hang on.” He put a hand to her face as he stepped in to look over her shoulder, judging how easy the chunk of rafter would be to remove. _Not_ , he realized grimly; it was still partially attached to the larger structure, and he was going to have to lift her off it. 

“Give me mercy,” she said, into his ear, and sobbed. Her breathing was all right, her lungs intact-- it was lower, in her guts. Aiden wracked his brains for what that meant, for a human-- for a Witcher, impalement was bad enough but he knew humans almost always died of it. If it had damaged her liver, or her spleen, she’d bleed out fast. “And then-- lie, and-- tell Lambert it was-- _instant_. I don’t want him-- to _know_.”

“No,” Aiden said, “Keira, it’s all right, I can still save you. It’s all right. I know it’s bad but just hang on.”

“No,” she sobbed. “No! You can’t!” 

He gave her a more calculating once-over. The position of the broken rafter-- it might not have hit her liver or spleen but there was a big chance she’d bleed out quickly once he moved her but he had that Sign, and if she had any ability to do magic at all anymore it would be nothing to get a healing charm on her. She’d moved her legs slightly as he’d stood here, so it wasn’t through her spine; it was fairly low in her torso, so not likely to have destroyed any organs irreparably. The best chance was that it was in her intestines; there’d be complications, but none of this was beyond what a Swallow could heal, and his experience of the _Cura_ Sign was that it could do about the same amount of good, if the caster really knew his stuff.

Well, but, mages were roughly human, in their healing abilities and general damageability-- he had no idea whether it would be enough. He knew gut-shot humans invariably died of infection, and he had no idea whether a mage could fight that. But he had to try. At the least, he couldn’t leave her like this.

“You’ve given me the tools to save you,” Aiden said. “It’s my turn. Let me try. Keira, look at me.” He put his hand on her cheek and looked intently into her face.

Her gaze stayed unfocused, but she looked at him, wrapping one bloody hand around his forearm. “Kill me,” she begged, “do it-- quick, I know you can-- do it quick, like you did-- for _her_ \--” 

He didn’t have any more time to discuss this. Fuck, she’d said all that before, too, in her horrible vision-dream. He couldn’t blame her for being incoherently terrified but he really needed her not to be.

“I need you to help me,” Aiden said, giving it one last try. 

“Lie to him,” Keira sobbed. “Tell him-- it was quick.” She had gone gray-white with shock.

Aiden really didn’t want to do this, but there wasn’t any more time, so he cast an _Axii_ as gently as he could, settling it down over Keira and holding it firmly there. She went calm and pliant, and stared blankly at him. “Okay,” he said. “Do you have any magical ability left?”

“Philippa pulled out what I had,” Keira said, distant and dreamy. She wasn’t feeling any pain, which was the only thing about this that was good. “It’s regenerating, but slowly. I can’t levitate anything yet.”

“Okay,” Aiden said. “All right.” He steeled himself. He wasn’t in great shape for this but he couldn’t spare himself a _Cura_ if he was going to hold this _Axii_ on her, cast the _Quen_ to stop the bleeding and then also cast the _Cura_ on her he’d need immediately to repair at least some of her blood vessels if she was going to have any chance to survive this. 

Fortunately she was a small person, and the angle was favorable. He settled a _Quen_ gently around both of them, and used as much finesse as he could muster to pass it through her, following the edge of the wood into her body and out the other side. It worked-- that was how any Witcher could stop their own severe bleeding at least temporarily, and he had done it so often that he had the skill he needed to do it to her. He felt it seal off several of her blood vessels, and then he knew he could do this. “I need you to put your arms around my neck.”

She obeyed, instantly obedient thanks to the _Axii_ , and he got as firm a grip on her body as he could, and then pulled her so, so carefully off the broken hunk of wood. She made no sound of protest; he had the _Axii_ held firmly enough that he knew she couldn’t feel a thing, and the _Quen_ to keep her blood in her body. He was in quite a lot of pain, himself, but there was nothing to be done about it; it did seem his leg really was broken, but his arm at least was just bruised. The damage at his midsection was muscle-deep but no further, he thought. And Keira was so slight, she weighed-- well, as much as a small full-grown human, but at least no more than that. It was a struggle, but he could lift her without shaking, and managed to remove her from the jagged piece of wood without making anything notably worse, though he had a bit of a bad moment getting her jacket untangled from it. 

He sank to the ground holding her, got a better grip, and then immediately formed and cast the _Cura_ on her to replace the _Quen_ , finding the blood vessels that were torn and coaxing them back together-- a big one, that was important-- some small ones-- and he did the best he could to pull her torn clothing out of the wound as he did so. It was exhausting and incredibly difficult and he’d never done anything so challenging but he’d had so much practice with the _Cura_ sign in the last few days with his eye that he was surprised to realize that he did know what to do.

She was limp and pliant and let him do as he would, and finally he got the hole in her body sealed shut and ran out of energy for the Sign. Still holding the _Axii_ was almost more than he could do, but he had to get her to get them to safety before he could let go.

She leaned against his chest, numb and blank but breathing, heartbeat almost back to normal as the _Axii_ eased both her terror and the shock, as they sat in a heap on the ground together. He composed himself and said, “Can you cast a portal?” He expected Philippa would be back in a moment, with overwhelming force; she’d written Keira off as dying but obviously couldn’t afford not to finish the job. And she’d said, the whole purpose of this was that she needed Aiden dead.

Keira looked dreamily up into his face. “Yeah,” she said. “Where to?”

He hadn’t thought that far. “Well,” he said. “I need you to do the rest of the healing on yourself. What do you need for that?”

“Workshop,” she said vaguely. 

“Do you have a workshop?” he asked. She did, surely. The place she kept insisting on going home to. The place she and Lambert had been shacked up. “The one in Kaedwen?”

“Yes,” she said. “That workshop.”

“Can you take us there?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Now?”

“Yes,” he said. “Wait! Can you make it so Philippa can't follow us there?”

“Hmm,” she said. “I don't think she'd be able to.” She breathed, then went on, absently, "She hasn't got a knack for that sort of thing, and she hasn't had time to put a tracing spell on me." She waved a hand almost languidly, though her brow creased absently with the effort, and a portal opened. Aiden picked her up and gritted his teeth, focusing on not dropping her to distract himself from his terror of the portal, and carried her through.

* * *

Ciri tried not to let on that she was proud of herself as she got a _Quen_ settled over Morvran and Outis together, but she caught Geralt’s eye briefly and his expression softened from grim readiness, just for a fragment of time before he turned away, and she knew he was proud of her too. 

She let Lambert and Geralt go first through the portal, Geralt still holding Philippa firmly, and took up the rear after Morvran and Outis. They came out into a ruin of a building, the distinctive pall of Novigrad harbor miasma hanging in the air, along with copious dust. 

“This building just collapsed,” Geralt said, with some alarm. 

“Yes,” Philippa said, “that was when I fled-- I’m not sure whether Keira or Aiden brought it down but I thought I had better go for help.”

“Truly,” Geralt said, “you, Philippa Eilheart, could not handle a fight between a Witcher and a mage.”

“I didn’t know why they were fighting,” Philippa said, “and I rather suspected I would be blamed if I just stood by and let it happen!”

“Fair,” Geralt conceded.

“Bodies everywhere,” Lambert said, voice sharp with worry. “Who are these people?”

“Bandits, looks like,” Geralt said. 

Outis had been prodding at the _Quen_ shield with an air of mild interest, but now he said, “Metz cast a portal here, very recently.”

“So she survived the fight,” Ciri said, and looked at Philippa, who was doing a good job at looking neutral-yet-concerned; she didn’t think she was imagining that Philippa looked briefly astonished at that bit of news. 

“This is Keira’s blood,” Lambert said, his voice harsh and upset. He was standing near a sizable splash of blood-- a jagged broken rafter was protruding and had very clearly injured someone quite badly. “This-- this is--” He whirled around and stared at Philippa. “Was she _impaled_ on this?” 

Philippa shook her head slightly. “I didn’t see,” she said. “I realized the building was coming down and just--” 

“And who killed these guys?” Lambert asked, and his hands were visibly shaking, though his voice was steady enough. He pointed at one of the bandits, who’d been killed cleanly but thoroughly with a sword cut that had opened him wide from his crotch to his shoulder. 

“The Witcher,” she said. “That Cat Witcher! I told you, he went berserk!”

“If Aiden were berserk when he did this you’d have a fine human paste, here,” Lambert said sharply, “and not a clean kill like this. Geralt, hang onto her, she’s lying.”

_I should have anticipated this_ , Ciri thought, as Philippa turned abruptly into an owl and shot out of Geralt’s grasp. Ciri’s as-yet makeshift _Yrden_ was too slow to catch her, and Geralt hadn’t anticipated the abrupt reversal in time to cast one of his own. 

“Fuck, not _again_ ,” Geralt said savagely.

“I’ve _got_ to get faster at that,” Ciri said, before Geralt could get any angrier at himself. “Well, so, Philippa did all of this. Best to let her go, for now, and focus on what we can still salvage. Do you suppose Aiden is somewhere under these ruins? And if so, is there a chance he’s alive?”

“I will have the location of Metz’s portal destination in a moment,” Outis said, unflappable, “and then I can begin a spell of scrying to determine the whereabouts of the missing Witcher, whether he is under that wreckage or not.”

“This is Aiden’s blood,” Lambert said, now casting about like a hound after a scent. He picked up a knife with a fine slick of blood on it. “I don’t smell more, though-- the rest of this is human.”

“Let’s be methodical about this,” Geralt said, and Lambert was clearly upset enough that he had no quarrel, he simply stood looking up at Geralt and let the older Witcher lay out a system for the two of them to search. 

“So the owl mage is an enemy,” Morvran said to Ciri. He had his sword drawn and was still alertly prepared to defend Outis, looking commendably keen about it. 

Ciri was mildly startled to notice that she had thought that last bit with a trace of unmistakable fondness. Well, and damn Emhyr anyway for recommending the boy as suitable. He wasn’t likely to be so keen about letting Ciri have her harem of bare-breasted maidens, or in more seriousness her darling Luliana-- well, it was premature to consider these things, so Ciri packed it all away to consider later. 

“Philippa Eilheart,” Ciri said, “has been a force to contend with for hundreds of years, and isn’t about to stop now, but yes, it’s fair to sum her up as _an enemy_ as of now, I should say. Likely she had a more sophisticated plot than this, which Keira or Aiden or both of them foiled, and this was her attempt to salvage things; I highly doubt she truly had intended to be so haphazard in her approach.”

“Kaedwen,” Outis said suddenly, and from the way both Witchers had flinched, busy as they were quartering the wreckage, just before he spoke, Ciri surmised that he’d just finished his spell. “Metz portaled to Kaedwen.”

“Kaedwen,” Ciri said, and looked at Lambert.

Lambert clambered down from the unsteady bit of wreckage he’d climbed. “Kaedwen,” he said. “That’s where her workshop is! At that safehouse of mine!”

“Take us there,” Ciri said to Outis. “If Aiden’s there, we can stop looking here. If he’s not there, we can come back directly. If he’s under all this, us taking five minutes’ break from searching won’t matter one way or the other.” 

“I could,” Geralt began, and she shook her head.

“I won’t split the party,” she said. “What if Philippa comes back? No.”

* * *

It was a cute little house, Aiden noted dimly, as he staggered through the garden gate and ran into the door elbow-first. It didn’t open. He stopped, cursing. “Keira,” he said. It was many decades since he’d been human, and a few even since he’d hung out with humans in any intensive way, but he was thoroughly aware that a human wouldn’t be conscious at this point; he was in screaming agony all up the one leg and he’d lost rather a bit of blood from various of his injuries, and Keira was small for an adult but she was still as heavy as a small adult in his arms and his vision was blacked-out around the edges. He absolutely did not have it in him to get this door open.

“Yes,” she said blankly, still held down under the _Axii_ that was taking up most of his remaining strength to hold. 

“Open the door,” he said, leaning his forehead and one shoulder against it. 

She put out a hand and touched the door, and it fell open, sending him stumbling painfully in. Fuck his leg was _fucked_ , this hurt a lot and he needed to meditate if he wasn’t going to take a potion, which he wasn’t, because he didn’t want his eye to fucking melt. 

But Keira wasn’t exactly safe. He’d stopped the major bleeding and her guts were approximately in the right place now but she was going to die if she didn’t get a bunch more healing done, none of which he was qualified to do.

It was a cute little house inside, too. Big central room with a nice hearth, several doors leading off. “Workroom,” he gritted out. “Where.”

She gestured vaguely toward the door in the north wall, and he staggered over to it and again ran into it when it wouldn’t open.

“Open,” he said raggedly, “the door,” and she put out her hand and touched it again, and he staggered through and this time he did fall. He managed not to drop her, and sat on the floor shivering in agony for a moment. Ah, his leg was _fucked_. And he was severely short on blood.

He wanted to let go of the _Axii_. He needed to let go of it. But if Keira wasn’t together enough to follow up, she’d die. He scooted himself across the floor, painfully, still clutching her against his chest, and got over to the workbench, then hauled himself up by main force and dumped her into the chair there. 

“Fix it,” he said to her, so lightheaded he was nearly blind with it. There was an adrenaline response trembling at the edge of his fading grasp on control, but he knew he could push that off and go into meditation instead-- he just needed to finish saving her, first.

“Fix what,” she said, blank.

“Heal yourself,” he said. “What do you. What do you need to do.”

“Charms against bleeding, charm against infection, healing cantrip, more complex healing spell to remove debris and rejoin damaged tissue, cantrip to reduce inflammation, tisane for blood replacement, tincture against infection,” she rattled off.

“Do-- that,” Aiden said, and let go of her, leaned against the wall, and couldn’t help but slide down to the floor. He couldn’t hold the Sign and hold off the adrenaline response at the same time, not for much longer.

“I can do it on my own,” she said, and he blinked up at her, half-blind. She was shaking off the _Axii_ , which was weak by now anyway.

“Good,” he said, “because I can’t make you,” and the _Axii_ broke with enough of a slap that he shivered away. But he managed to stave off the adrenaline too, with all his remaining concentration.

“I will,” she said, voice thick.

He didn’t answer, and sank down into meditation with silent relief.

* * *

Geralt had his hand fisted in the back of Lambert’s jerkin as they went through the next portal to Kaedwen. He knew it was necessary because Lambert wasn’t fighting him at all, but was leaning away, just a little, just enough to feel the tension of his hand all the time, just enough to be sure Geralt was still there holding him. 

Geralt couldn’t blame him. There’d been a lot of blood, back there. And he remembered how frightened and despairing Keira had been about her true vision of her own death. The only thing more brutal was possibly the sense of hope they all still had, since Outis’s ability to identify magic had told them it was Keira who’d opened this portal. Other than that, it didn’t look good for her having survived whatever had shed all that blood.

The portal spat them out just outside the garden gate of a tidy little farmhouse with a garden impeccably put-away for winter. “This place?” Geralt said. 

“This is where I spent the winter,” Lambert said. For a Witcher, his heart was racing. Geralt held his grip steady, reassuring. “Door’s open. Someone’s been here.”

The others followed behind, and Geralt paced steadily along with Lambert, gently holding him back as he went to the door. “Blood on the door,” Geralt observed quietly. 

“Keira’s blood,” Lambert said, after a deep inhalation.

“More blood on the ground,” Geralt pointed out. A shed drop. “Keira’s?”

Lambert paused, and knelt down to touch it. Fresh on his fingertips. “Aiden’s,” he said, voice sharper. Geralt had let go of him to let him kneel, and caught at his shoulder as he surged up to run into the house.

“Easy,” Geralt said, softly, barely out loud. If Aiden were badly injured-- Geralt had seen some of the aftermath of a berserker Cat before, and he knew his own adrenaline response well enough to know this was the kind of thing that brought it out. 

Lambert hesitated, and let Geralt take hold of his jerkin again, and then they went in the door. 

It was a tidy, largish house, with several rooms, and one of the doors stood open. Lambert jerked as if to run to that door, and Geralt held him. “Easy,” he said again, taking a moment to breathe the house’s air currents. It smelled of Keira, smelled lived-in, no fire in the hearth but there had been one recently, no scent of spoiled food, vague scents of cooking but nothing recent. Living people. Smelled-- yes, smelled vaguely of Aiden. He’d been here, not likely dead. 

Geralt let up the tension, and let Lambert walk across the floor. Another drop of shed blood. “That Aiden’s too?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lambert said. 

Smear of blood on the open door, scent of blood from inside. Sounds of breathing. Live people, in that room, at least one anyway. Keira. Keira was alive in that room. She was crying. “Keira’s in that room,” Geralt said, and Lambert nodded. Aiden had possibly dropped dead, but wasn’t berserk, at least. Not if Keira were still breathing.

“Smells of her magic,” Outis said quietly. “She’s here, she’s alive, and she’s casting spells.”

“ _Wait_ ,” Geralt said, when Lambert would have dashed into the room. He cast a _Quen_ over both of them, and then let Lambert out to arm’s length to go through the door.

Lambert was more or less quivering at the end of Geralt’s arm. Geralt came through the door himself, into what was obviously Kiera’s workroom.

Keira was sitting on the floor, propped against the wall, with her knees drawn up. She had blood all over her face and hands and-- just everywhere, but it was drying blood; from the scent, she wasn’t actively bleeding.

Aiden was propped against the wall beside her, limbs sprawled out limply, head tipped back slightly, and at first Geralt thought he was dead. Keira had his hands in hers and was bent over them weeping. 

But Geralt recognized Aiden’s state, after an alarmed moment; he was in meditation, though not in the normal position. He’d quite obviously gone into meditation as a form of collapse. He’d lost a great deal of blood and taken a lot of damage and had, by the scent, taken no potions. For Geralt, that was when adrenaline would kick in to get him to safety, but if Aiden had a berserker-type adrenaline response, it stood to reason that he’d avoid that. And, to be fair, he’d made it to safety without it.

Lambert had said Aiden was “good”, but hadn’t elaborated; Geralt had idly wondered whether a lot of Aiden’s “good”ness was really general affability and his undeniable attractiveness. But this was evidence that maybe there was more to it than that after all. Maybe Lambert was right. 

“Keira,” Lambert said. 

Keira sobbed. “Lambert,” she said. “Lambert, is he-- I can’t wake him up.”

Geralt let go, then, of Lambert’s jerkin, and Lambert threw himself to the floor, grabbing Keira and hauling her in against his chest. 

“He’s all right,” Lambert said, and put his other hand on Aiden’s face, then hauled him in as well. Aiden went limply, head lolling against Lambert’s shoulder, but one of his hands twitched and then came up to grab clumsily at Lambert’s arm.

Keira was sobbing too hard to speak, but from the sounds of it, her lungs were intact and functioning, and she wasn’t actively bleeding. Geralt took a step backward, and turned to look at Ciri, who was standing in the main room, Morvran a ways behind her still standing at the ready to guard Outis. Geralt liked Morvran, he didn’t fuss about things but he paid attention, too. He had an arrogant facade but he didn’t let that blind him.

“Don’t think we’ll get much sense out of her for the moment,” Geralt said, “but they’re both alive and neither looks to be changing that status anytime soon.”

Ciri sighed deeply, making much of letting her shoulders slump in relief. “Now we only have to worry about Philippa declaring herself an enemy, and figuring out what she actually meant to do by all of that.”

“But in the meantime,” Geralt said, “I think they’re all right now.”

Ciri nodded, and turned to Outis and Morvran. “Thank you for your assistance,” she said.

Morvran laughed. “I’m delighted not to have actually had to do anything at all,” he said, sheathing his sword. He presented himself to Ciri, something endearing in the way he squared his shoulders for her. “I am ever at your service, my lady, even if the next time you call upon me actually requires me to have to do something.”

There was nothing mocking in his laugh, or in the grin he turned on her. For her part, Ciri smiled back at him, almost as if she didn’t mean to be smiling, just for a moment before she visibly pulled herself together and looked at Geralt. “You and I can stay a little while longer, and we’ll get ourselves back to Nilfgaard once we’re certain everyone here is all right, but Outis, you and Morvran should go back now. Morvran, can you report to Emhyr on what happened?”

Movran bowed in assent, and Outis gestured up a portal for them to depart through.

“That kid’s all right,” Geralt said. 

“I know,” Ciri said. Geralt looked at her.

“I’m not saying a damn thing beyond that,” Geralt said. 

“I know you aren’t,” Ciri said, and she didn’t look as pleased by that as Geralt had thought she might. 

“Should I?” Geralt asked. 

Ciri shook her head, and went over to the hearth, and the conversation of Morvran was forgotten in their mutual delight at how effective the _Igni_ she cast was at getting the hearth lit.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Oh, this story's just about done,_ I thought to myself, _now all that's left is the... oh the relationship negotiation and like. All the stuff they haven't processed yet._  
>  LOL piece of cake right?

Keira didn’t know how long she spent sobbing, curled against Lambert’s chest. It was like she’d been outside of herself, first broken by panic then lost under the heavy soft dull weight of what she realized had to have been Aiden’s _Axii_ sign, and then caught up in the keen focus of magical healing, until she’d hit the brutal shock of becoming aware enough of her surroundings to realize Aiden was sprawled next to her as if dead, with a trail of smeared blood where he must have dragged her into the room. 

None of it felt real except the terror, and she couldn’t stop replaying the sensation of the spike of wood as it had gone through her, the horrible deep sense of dislocation, the agony of it building slow along with the horror and realization-- 

But Lambert was there, now, and holding her tightly, and she didn’t even know what he was saying, just that he was talking, low and soft and intense, her name and-- sweet things-- good things-- there he was, he was _there_ , and she clung to him and sobbed and sobbed. 

Finally she managed to stop long enough to catch her breath, and his hand kept moving slow and gentle across her back. “I’ve got you,” he said. “I’ve got you. I’m right here. It’s all right.”

Her brain could pick them out as words, now. “Lambert,” she said, and sobbed, and managed to get herself back under control. 

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

She just breathed, for a moment, feeling how tenuous her control was. Her chaos was regenerating steadily; she’d had to drain it back down fairly severely to cast the spells to put her body back together. But she’d survived long enough for that largely by dint of Aiden’s efforts. Her memory of all of it was vague and distant, muffled by _Axii_ , but she did remember it; Lambert must have taught him _Cura_ , because that was how she hadn’t bled out immediately.

“Aiden,” she said. “I couldn’t wake him.”

“He’s gone into meditation,” Lambert said. “Happens if you really need to heal. He came out of it a little, he’s there.”

She got herself under control enough to pick her head up and look. Aiden was still horribly limp against the wall, but Lambert’s other hand was threaded through his, fingers interlaced. Now that she wasn’t shaking and half-conscious, she could see that his chest was moving slightly with his breathing. Was it? She worked one of her hands out from where it was clutched against Lambert’s chest, and reached over to touch Aiden’s throat, feeling for his pulse point.

She had to wait, but after a moment his slow heartbeat throbbed against her fingertips, and after another brief wait, repeated. She shivered and sobbed, and couldn’t bear to pull her fingers away, and his heart beat again, and then again. “I thought he was dead,” she managed to say.

“He needs some healing,” Lambert said, “but he’ll be all right.”

“I can help,” she said.

Lambert kissed her forehead. “Good,” he said. “Rest first. Are you all right?”

That made her cry again, how tenderly he’d asked it, compared with-- what it had been-- and she sobbed for a little while. At length she was able to gasp out, “It came true,” and he said, “I know,” and kissed the side of her head. 

Suddenly she-- it wasn’t that she’d forgotten about the surrounding circumstances, but suddenly she was aware of them, and she gasped and said, “Philippa--”

“She came to us with a wild story that you were, well, I’m not sure what she planned to pin on you,” Lambert said, “but she claimed Aiden had gone berserk and was trying to kill you and she’d had to run for her life.”

“Did anyone else get hurt,” Keira managed to ask. 

“No,” Lambert said. “Well-- I mean, there were a bunch of dead bandits, but I assume Aiden killed them under provocation.”

“Yes,” Keira said. “Philippa-- there was a spell of control and she cast it on me, and made me open that portal.”

“We figured that,” Lambert said. 

“And she put one on Aiden too but he-- he just shrugged it off,” Keira said. “I don’t know how!”

“Three years of practice,” Aiden said hoarsely, and she startled and looked at him. He looked ghastly, pale and listless, still slack against the wall, but he was looking at her. “Hey, are you all right?”

She had to fight down tears, which was getting tedious. “I’m all right,” she managed.

He nodded slightly. “I’m sorry about the _Axii_ ,” he said. “I mean I am _really_ sorry about it, but I kind of figured there was absolutely no way you were going to be able to function at all like that. Even just the pain-- I am sorry, Keira, and I wouldn’t do that to you if I had any choice.”

“No,” she said, “you had to. I understand.”

“I only held it so long because I knew if I let go I wouldn’t have the strength to cast it again,” he said. “And if I couldn’t get you to a point where you could fix yourself, that was going to be the end of you.”

“No, I understand,” she said. Oh, there was the pain in her chest again-- a very different one from being impaled, but it was that old familiar one. Oh, Aiden was alive, and she’d succeeded, and Lambert was his now and she had to give him back. _Oh_ , it felt like _dying_. But this very different pain let her shove down all of the overwhelm and horror and the rest of it, and shove it into a box and snap the lid shut. She breathed through it for a moment, and collected herself. Time to stop sobbing on Lambert’s chest: he wasn’t hers to do that to. She wiped her face, and sat up. “You were injured. Let me fix it.”

“I’m fine,” Aiden said. He reached over and took her hand, and she let him. “Are you all right really? You rattled off the whole list of spells you were going to have to do and it seemed like a lot.”

“I had everything I needed here,” Keira said. “I did what I had to. I need to eat and sleep and take things easy for a couple of days but most everything is back where it ought to go. I’ll be fine.”

He squeezed her hand. “That was awful,” he said quietly. “I am so sorry that happened to you.”

“I did it to myself by throwing you bodily through the support beams of a building,” Keira said bitterly, “I don’t think you need to apologize to me about anything.”

“I’m not apologizing,” he said, “I didn’t do it, but I’m still sorry that it happened.” 

She shivered. “It was supposed to happen,” she said. “Geralt prevented Radovid from doing it and Destiny thought it still needed to happen. I don’t know what it means that you pulled me off it and kept me going.”

Lambert laughed suddenly. “It means Destiny didn’t actually care whether you died that way or not,” he said, and kissed the side of her head again. “Just that you had to go through it. Maybe this is what it meant!”

It felt so fucking good when he held her and kissed her like that, and that made her chest ache worse. She didn’t get to have nice things like that. That wasn’t how it worked. She pulled herself together, or tried to. “I don’t know,” she said tiredly, defeated. 

“It’d be a bit too pointed if that’s what Destiny did to make you stay in one place long enough for us to talk all our shit out,” Aiden said. 

“ _Aiden_ ,” Lambert said. 

Aiden stared at him a moment, blinking as if offended. “Did you just--” He turned to Keira. “Did you hear him take that tone with me? Him? That tone? _Me_?”

“It’s _too soon_ ,” Lambert said, almost pleading. “You cannot-- you _cannot_ make impalement jokes, Aiden, it is _too soon_. For the love of Melitele, she’s still got the torn bloody clothing on, she hasn’t even washed her _hands_ , you _cannot_ make impalement jokes.”

“Too pointed, _fuck_ ,” Aiden said, and put his free hand over his eyes. “In my defense, it’s a reflex.”

Keira didn’t mean to laugh, but it snuck out in a kind of snort and she covered her face. “You just lost your _I died_ free hits,” Lambert snarled.

“Fuck,” Aiden said mournfully, “I was going to milk that for _years_ , too.”

“Too bad, pal,” Lambert said. He was cradling Keira tightly. More than anything she had ever wanted in her life before, she wanted him not to let go of her. Which was a sign that she had to make him let go of her, because if that was going to kill her she’d might as well get it over with now. 

She was gathering herself when movement in the doorway made her look up. Geralt’s face hung there, looking in with some concern. “Is everyone going to survive?” Geralt asked.

“Aiden might not,” Lambert said, “if he keeps making fucking _jokes_ about it. _A pointed hint from Destiny_ , you’re an _asshole_.”

“Sorry!” Aiden said, waving his hands a little. “I didn’t-- it just came out! Listen I had to fucking-- _deal_ with that, if _anybody_ gets to make a joke--”

“If anybody gets to make a joke about it, it’s _me_ ,” Keira said, a little frostily, but only because it was too great a temptation to be funny.

“That’s fair,” Geralt said. “Well, Ciri has to go, and I was going to go with her, but I can hang around if Aiden needs protection from the consequences of his tasteless jokes, as long as Keira can portal me back to Nilfgaard tomorrow or the day after.”

“We’re fine here,” Keira said, mostly because she wasn’t about to expose herself to any more of Geralt’s pity. In fact, she’d like as much privacy for all of this as possible. “Unless you want to go back with him, Lambert, Aiden?”

“I’m not letting go of you,” Lambert said, “for at least three days. Aiden can do what he wants.”

“I promise I’ll shut up,” Aiden moaned. “Don’t kick me out.”

“Well,” Geralt said, “there’s food out there, and I’m going to leave you to it.”

“Thanks,” Lambert said. 

“Fuck,” Aiden said. He pushed himself a little more upright against the wall, grimacing. “I really didn’t-- Lambert, if you don’t use your fucking words, though, I’m going to make even _worse_ puns, just you wait.”

“You need medical attention,” Keira said, sliding herself out of Lambert’s arms. He let her go, and she felt the chill from her ripped clothes where the jagged chunk of wood had torn through her. But she had to be able to sit up on her own, here. She needed to get herself under control. 

“I need food, water, and time,” Aiden said, fixing her with a forbidding look, inasmuch as his pleasant face was capable of. Oh, but he _was_ terrifying; even not in control of herself, she’d been able to watch him, half-naked, cut down two dozen armed men with a stolen sword, and that mental image wasn’t going to leave her any time soon. But he wasn’t really suited to sternness, face-wise. 

“If you’re not going to let anyone heal that leg you should at least splint it,” Lambert said. 

He had been limping. Keira looked at the expanse of his legs, sprawled out across the room, and could easily pick out that the right one was badly swollen below the knee, likely a green fracture of some kind. 

Aiden scowled at him. “You could help me out,” he said, “cast one of your fancy Signs on it, or you could be sarcastic at me.”

“I can do better than a cantrip,” Keira said.

“Well,” Lambert said, “I’ll get the food and water, then. I assume you need to eat too, Keira.”

“I will,” she said absently, weaving a little spell of scrying to give her a better idea of what was going on with Aiden’s leg. It was a green fracture, the bone cracked through in several places, but there was surprisingly little displacement-- possibly his muscles were holding it into position, possibly that was something Witchers’ muscles were designed to do or perhaps it was just chance. 

“What’s that showing you?” he asked, hitching himself painfully up to lean in and look. She gestured, and made the illusion more visible to him.

“This,” she said, “is the soft tissue of your leg, this is the bone here, this is the tendon that holds your kneecap on, this is the primary muscle of the shin and that’s the secondary one, running down, there, and that’s the calf muscle. And you can see, there, that’s where the bone’s not, er. In one piece.”

“I’ve only seen this stuff inside people I cut apart,” Aiden said, fascinated. “So it’s broken, yeah?”

“Oh, it’s very broken,” Keira said, “and you ought not to have been able to walk on it like that.”

“Well,” he said, “it didn’t feel good, but I think that sort of thing works differently for us than standard humans.”

“Mm,” Keira said, and left the illusion up for him to look at while she stood and went over to her work table. She assembled a few components and came back over. “This would be easier if I could get those boots and possibly the trousers off.”

“Ha,” Aiden said. “Look, I’m already not really wearing a shirt, isn’t that enough?”

He was, in fact, still wearing the shoulder armor she’d found in Halmatia’s basement, and little to nothing else up top. “How’d that work out for you, armor-wise?” she asked.

“When given a choice of only one part of the body to have armor on,” Aiden said, “I would literally never choose the shoulders, and I knew that before, but now I extra know it, and so do you.”

“What would you pick?” she asked, sitting back on her heels to assemble the spell onto the splint she wanted to tie against his skin.

“Gauntlets, number one,” Aiden said, and showed her his battered knuckles. They were healing over even without potions, she observed with interest. “Torso armor, number two, or at least a shirt,” and he gestured at his midsection, which was abraded and cut in several places-- some of the wounds were rather serious, or would be if he weren’t what he was. The waistband of his trousers was completely soaked in blood.

“Well,” she said, “so, if you were completely naked, would you still choose gauntlets?”

“No,” he said, “boots,” and reached down and, with a grimace, set to unfastening his boots. “Do I really have to take this off? Only it’s _really_ going to hurt.”

“I can get it off you,” she said, and used a little charm to very delicately convince the material of the boot to expand itself an inch or two every direction so that she could carefully wriggle it off of Aiden’s injured leg without pulling or tugging at all on his actual leg. It then snapped back to its normal size, and she set it aside.

“Fuck me,” he said, “that’s convenient.”

He was wearing horrible socks, holed and filthy, and Keira stripped the sock off him with a charm solely so she wouldn’t have to touch it, and used the ends of the charm to convince his trouser leg that it could fold up to his knee easily without any trouble, though the way it was shaped it oughtn’t to have been able to. “Well,” she went on, conversationally, as she very carefully affixed the bespelled splint to the bared skin of his broken leg, “if it was a choice of boots or, say, underpants?”

“Boots,” he said. “Fighting barefoot is no fucking joke.”

“This shouldn’t hurt,” she said, “but you’ll feel it,” and activated the spell. 

Aiden jerked upright like he’d just shuffled across a wool carpet and then touched a metal door handle, though he kept his leg immobile. “Hng,” he said, or something like it. Keira frowned, looking at his startled expression, then looked down at the active spell. 

“Does it hurt?” she asked, concerned.

“No,” Aiden said unconvincingly, his hands grasping convulsively at the floor. “No, it’s-- oh-- no it’s fine. Ooh- _waah_!”

“Hm,” she said, “I rather think Witchers experience sensation somewhat differently than normal humans.” She sighed. “Which Halmatia’s notes ought to have told me, but she was so unprofessional! She wrote down the most useless things. It was like nobody ever taught her to measure anything.”

“That,” Aiden said tightly, “is truly the worst thing about her, you’re right.”

Keira sighed. “I figured it went without saying that it was also reprehensible of her to use living sentients, which has been banned since the Council of,” and she paused. “Eh, I’d have to look up the date. Anyway it is _entirely_ illegal and for _excellent_ reasons, but even if you wanted to try to justify it as being for science, you can’t, because she was fucking _terrible_ at science. And if she was going to spend years hurting you, at least she could have written it down so I would already know what not to do to you, since I am trying _not_ to hurt you.”

Aiden made a humorless little laughing noise. “Keira,” he said, “the fact that you’re not actively trying to hurt me is plenty.”

Lambert came back into the room with a tray and set it down, then brought a cup of water over to Aiden, who took it and downed it and handed it back. Lambert clearly had expected that, because he was standing with a pitcher ready to refill it, which he did, and handed it over. 

“Just give me the pitcher,” Aiden said.

“Listen I’m a wolf but I’m not an animal,” Lambert said. “When you’re done I’m going to go refill the pitcher, smartass.”

“Hm,” Aiden said, and downed the cup and handed it back. Lambert filled the cup, and then left the room, as he’d said. 

“Does it feel any better yet?” Keira asked, touching the skin next to the magical splint gingerly. Aiden’s skin was as hot as Lambert’s, and even more so with the swelling. 

“It’s not-- pain,” Aiden said. He looked better already, less pale and drawn. “It’s better, yes.” He wiggled his toes, displaying a startling ability to move them individually. “I could walk. If I had to.”

Lambert came back in and handed Aiden a bowl, and then handed one to Keira too.

She set it down absently, and Lambert said, “No, Keira, that’s for you to eat _now_.”

“I’m fine,” she said. He sat down next to her. 

“Eat,” he said, “or I’ll feed you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Keira said. But he was right; she was feeling shaky and unsteady and it was too much magical healing and no food. She picked up the bowl and poked at it. It was one of the meals she’d bought from the tavern ages ago and left under preservation charms-- a stew, but Lambert had clearly taken care in the dishing-up so it mostly had the parts she could eat, including the little dumplings cooked on top of it that were her favorite part.

Aiden’s bowl mostly had the meat, and none of the dumplings, she rather thought, though he’d wolfed much of it down already. Lambert had another bowl on the tray for him, waiting. While Lambert was distracted getting the other bowl for Aiden, Keira carefully sampled a bite of the food.

She’d had a lot of damage, inside her torso. Aiden had done a surprisingly neat job of fixing the worst of it-- she’d watched with a fuzzy unconcerned kind of distance, from the far side of his _Axii_ , but looking back she could see that he’d focused on making sure the blood vessels were re-connected correctly. He’d used _Cura_ with a surprising amount of facility; he’d clearly been taught it and practiced it extensively. She’d had to do quite a lot of work to heal herself, but with the blood vessels intact throughout the entire thing, it was much easier and more successful with less risk of complications, so he’d made his choice with considerable either luck or skill, and she suspected skill.

What it boiled down to was that she needed to eat, and likely would have no problem if she did, but the memory of the trauma was making it a bit difficult to convince herself that she could. But that first bite went down easily enough, and she sampled the rest a bit tentatively and found that in fact she could get it down, and felt better for having done so.

Aiden ate ravenously, which was unsurprising-- Witcher metabolisms were high, and she wasn’t surprised to discover that they had accelerated healing even without potions, and that it took a metabolic cost to power that. Lambert had gone and refilled his first bowl, and swapped it out for his emptied second one. 

“That’ll be enough for me,” Aiden said, “thanks, Lamb.”

Lambert took the second bowl and refilled it and came and sat next to her, eating from it himself. “Goin’ down all right?” he asked her; she knew he’d been watching her the whole time but had carefully been not commenting on it.

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

He could not have more clearly been biding his time until he thought she’d eaten enough before he pestered her about something. Aiden was very studiously pretending to be utterly absorbed in what he was eating. They were in her house, was the thing; moreover, in her workshop, so she had nowhere to retreat to. 

She let herself pretend it was fine, let herself eat more; he was right, she’d get too upset to eat if she talked about it now, and she did certainly need to eat in order for the magical healing to actually fully take. She was still going to have to heal some things the hard way; there was going to be a lot of bruising for her body to have to work through in the normal way, at the least. 

She paused to drink, and Lambert went and got another pitcher, and when he poured it into Aiden’s cup it was obviously small-beer, from the stock he’d brewed for their use. Not long ago, but it seemed longer, before she’d realized that finding Aiden’s body wasn’t what was going to happen.

“I gotta get you out of that outfit,” Lambert said finally, his eyes lingering on the ripped-open part of her jacket. It was all soaked in blood, mostly dry now. 

“I’ll clean up in a moment,” Keira said tiredly. She waved a hand. “Aiden’s almost as big a mess.”

“I’m used to him being a mess,” Lambert said. 

“Hey,” Aiden said, and poked Lambert with his good foot, which still had its boot on. Lambert grabbed the boot and started unfastening it.

“She’s right, we have to wash you,” Lambert said, and then he laughed. “I almost forgot about the bathhouse here, though. Listen, Kitty-cat, you’re going to fucking love this: you have to go through a portal to take a bath.”

“What,” Aiden said, trying and failing to rescue his foot. Lambert finished unfastening the boot, and wrenched it off.

“Ugh,” Lambert said, “why do you still _have_ these socks?”

“Perfectly good socks,” Aiden said. “I just gotta mend ‘em. Not my fault I been distracted. What do you _mean_ you gotta go through a portal here?”

“It’s not… required,” Keira said, a bit self-conscious. 

“It’s _great_ , though,” Lambert said. 

“If you’re done eating, you go ahead and clean up first,” Keira said. 

“Nuh-uh,” Lambert said. “The last time I let you out of my sight you had your fucking _prophetic death vision_ come true.”

“He’s got a point,” Aiden said. “Listen, I don’t need to go through a portal. Just give me a bucket. Maybe two buckets if you want it to be fancy. You two can go through that portal. I’ll be fine.”

“Let’s not split the party,” Lambert said. 

They weren’t going to leave, and they weren’t going to leave her alone. What did they want from her? Keira considered it dully, exhausted. “You want me to take a bath with you,” she said. “With both of you.”

“I’ll be honest,” Lambert said, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get Aiden into the bath without your assistance. He’s none too fond of bathing.”

“I mean it,” Aiden said, “just give me a bucket, you’re making me nervous.”

_Fuck it_ , Keira thought. She’d forseen her death, evaded it once, and now had lived through it because this ridiculous scarecrow had bodily lifted her out of it. Now he was pretending (or maybe he wasn’t) to be afraid of her bathtub like a large mournful pet dog. If Destiny was going to come collect on her, she might as well have done some amusing things.

She emptied the last few spoonfuls out of her bowl, set the bowl aside, and managed to get to her feet, leaning heavily on her workbench. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s go bathe Aiden.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tiny almost-warning-- there's a moment where Aiden misgenders Keira and Lambert dithers over whether to correct him, and there's some feelings about outing someone or not, but it's here-and-gone and they'll discuss it at some future point, not yet. Just, if that's a sore spot be ready for it pretty early in the chapter.

Lambert had a bad moment of thinking maybe Aiden was actually frightened of the portal, but he caught a wink from Aiden as Keira stepped through with a coaxing gesture, and realized all of this was Aiden being dramatic to keep Keira from having a chance to make her excuses and run away from them. 

Lambert leaned into it, pretending he had to bodily push Aiden through the portal. Aiden’s astonishment on the other side wasn’t feigned at all. “We’re _outdoors_ ,” Aiden said, “but _in a cave_ , and it _has a fucking forest in it_.”

“I built it for myself,” Keira said, a little defiant, arms crossed over her chest, partly obscuring the hole torn in her clothing but not at all obscuring the enormous amount of blood discoloring the lower hem of her jacket and much of her trousers. “I was trapped in Velen, I had to pretend to be a hedgewitch the whole time, I couldn’t go anywhere, I couldn’t really even use my magic-- so I collected real things and built this. It’s real, it’s just-- not in a real place, exactly.”

Right about then Aiden caught sight of the enormous tiled tub. “What the fuck,” he said. 

“I don’t have a pretty bathrobe for you,” Keira said, frowning. “I did for Lambert but that was coincidence.” She was clearly giving this a lot of thought, as she sat on the tiled bench to unfasten her shoes. “Ah, I think I have something.” She concentrated for a moment, and made a one-handed gesture, and Lambert caught the flicker as something appeared itself onto the hook next to his green-and-black robe. 

“I’m not really suited for pretty things,” Aiden said, still staring dubiously at the tub. “Wait-- are we actually-- where _are_ we?”

Keira sighed. “It’s a real cave,” she said, “but I have a whole self-sustaining ventilation spell going on, and the trees are actually in two places at once so they can get sunlight and water to stay alive.” She was pretending to be tired and jaded as she explained it, but Lambert could tell she was a little proud to be showing it off. “Mostly it was a thought exercise, for me-- something I could spend my time and energy on to remember that I was capable of things like this, but not anything anyone would find and kill me for.” She shrugged. 

Aiden transferred his stare from the tub to her, and Lambert knew him well enough to read that he was impressed. “Huh,” he said. “Well, I guess I can be a sport and try it out, but. Is the water real?”

“It’s real,” she said. “Oh, here, I rolled that trouser-cuff and you’re not going to be able to get it off if I don’t unroll it,” and she gestured and Aiden hopped in place a little, startled, as his trouser leg unrolled itself. 

They’d taken the magic splint and the shoulder armor off, along with the little bag of agates Keira had seemed impressed he’d managed to hang onto, so Aiden was barefoot in trousers and an exceedingly worse-for-wear shirt. Lambert kept out of the way, watching the two of them undress, afraid to comment on Keira for fear she’d reconsider and vanish again. 

Keira shrugged out of her jacket and held it up briefly, frowning at it. It was badly tattered, distressingly so. “I think it’s done for, sweetheart,” Lambert ventured to say. 

She gave him a sidelong look. “I don’t know, perhaps this hasn’t come up yet,” she said, “but I’m a mage. However, it’ll take more energy and focus than I’ve got at the moment.” She looked him up and down. “Are you just here to spectate, then?”

“Oh,” Lambert said, “no, I, well-- I mean, I’m not covered in your blood.”

She gave him another once-over. “If that’s your criteria,” she said. 

“It’s not like it’ll be crowded in there,” Aiden said, holding his shirt in his hands and surveying it dubiously. “I won’t ask you to fix this.” He glanced up at the tub. “Is it-- why is the water hot, can I ask that?”

“It’s being pulled in here from a hot spring,” Keira said, again pretending great casualness but preening somewhat, deservedly, at her own cleverness. “And it goes back out into the same stream, it just circulates through here briefly.”

“It could be a little hotter,” Lambert said, “for my purposes, but it’s pretty cozy.”

“Mm,” Aiden said dubiously. He tilted his head. “I could just. Y’know. A bucket.”

“You won’t dissolve,” Keira said, setting her boots neatly by the bench. They were full of dried blood. “I promise you won’t dissolve. If you start to dissolve, I will save you. It’s the least I can do, after today.”

“I have held your actual guts in my hands,” Aiden said, half to himself. “I feel like I don’t usually get to know a girl like that on so short an acquaintance.” He peeled himself out of his trousers, which were rather crusted with dried blood from his various wounds.

Keira looked up sharply at that, and then glanced at Lambert. He realized with sudden shock that she’d assumed that he’d told Aiden all about everything that had transpired between them. “I,” Lambert said, but then shut his mouth. How to say _Aiden doesn’t know you’re not a girl_ without negating the fact by the very statement? But if she thought he knew, that was a shitty thing of him to say. 

“Don’t be jealous,” Aiden said, oblivious to Lambert’s dilemma, and made a face. “Really, don’t be. It was pretty awful.”

“I said no impalement jokes,” Lambert said. “It’s still too soon, Aiden.”

“To be fair,” Aiden said, “that’s a _disembowelment_ joke, which is a subtly different thing.”

“I wasn’t disemboweled,” Keira said haughtily. Aiden looked delighted, and Lambert had a dizzying glimpse of how much of his future life could well consist of Aiden setting off Keira’s pedantic tendencies on purpose. His stomach clenched at how much he _wanted_ that. 

He unfastened his jacket and shucked it. “Well,” he said. “I guess someone’s got to hold Aiden underwater until the filth dissolves so we can find out what’s left.”

Aiden was standing awkwardly, arms folded across his chest, in nothing but his braies, and Keira gracefully shed the last of her clothing and went naked up the steps to the tub. Aiden was very pointedly not staring at her, but Lambert finished undressing hurriedly so that he wouldn’t have to take his eyes off her. 

She didn’t have any illusions on; she’d dispelled the last cosmetic ones from her face and hair, and was just herself, without even the spell that held her breasts in place. She sighed, and slid into the water, and then sank down under it to get her hair wet.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Aiden muttered admiringly, while she was underwater.

“Yeah,” Lambert said. “C’mon.”

“I admit I genuinely am a little freaked out by magical water that comes from the gods know where,” Aiden said. 

“It’s fine,” Lambert said, “I spent all winter bathing in it and don’t have any kind of magical fungus infections so it’s probably good.”

Keira surfaced in time to hear that. “Well?” she said, leaning against the side of the pool. 

“C’mon,” Lambert said, putting an arm around Aiden’s shoulders and tugging him up the steps. Aiden was still limping very slightly; one of his arms was mostly black with bruising, and while he’d started to heal most of the damage, there were open cuts and scrapes all over the lower part of his torso. And he was pale and moved like he had a headache; he looked awful. He really did need to be cleaned up. 

Aiden sighed heavily, grimaced, and then stepped into the tub reluctantly. Lambert kept hold of his elbow, pretending it was to keep him from fleeing but really to steady him, not that he’d ever admit needing such a thing except for in the case of it being funny. He let Lambert hold him up and settle him on the bench, grimacing as the water stung his cuts. 

“Sorry, babe,” Lambert said, easing him down. “Shit, you’re all cut up. Shame we can’t get a Swallow in you.”

Keira had slicked her wet hair back and was lathering up a washcloth. She passed the soap and another washcloth to Lambert, who dunked both in the water to start working up his own lather. “The new eye will hold up to potions,” she said. “I’m-- even without Philippa’s help I can still do it.”

“Give me that,” Aiden said, taking the washcloth. “I’m not having you prod at me, you’re a menace.” 

“Come off it,” Lambert said, but then he turned his attention to Keira, who had stood so the water was only waist-deep, and was peering at her own midsection. 

The new scar, magically-healed, where she’d been so horribly injured, was coming visible as she scrubbed away the blood. Lambert moved closer, suddenly struck by how close she’d come to dying. 

“I can’t see the back at all,” she said, turning, and he took the washcloth from her and gently wiped it across her back, exposing what was in all a fairly unprepossessing ridge of pale scar tissue. 

“Straight through,” Lambert murmured to himself, sliding the washcloth around her side to find the matching scar in the front. “My gods, Keira.”

“Yeah,” Aiden said shortly. “Clear through-and-through, low, mostly in the intestines. Lucky, though-- I could heal that. If it’d gone through her liver or something we’d’ve been fucked, I don’t think I have the kind of control over that Sign to put a critical soft organ back together after that kind of a demolishing.”

Keira looked up sharply at Aiden. “Wait,” she said, “how did you know the _Cura_ Sign? Did Lambert teach you?”

“No,” Aiden said. He’d scrubbed himself fairly gingerly-- and cursorily-- and now had the washcloth draped over his head so he looked mournful and faintly ridiculous, slouched in the corner of the tub. He tipped his head up and pulled the washcloth off. “He showed me, but I couldn’t make the spell-shape. But Ciri could, so she figured it out and gave it to me, and to Geralt. And to herself; she was mighty pleased over it as a concept.”

“Oh,” Keira said, and she looked surprised and pleased. “She could make it work?”

“Without a problem,” Aiden said. “And then I’ve had all this practice casting it on my eye, so--”

“It was good thinking,” Keira said, “to start with the blood vessels.”

Aiden nodded. “Standard,” he said. “I mean, I’ve noticed Swallow does-- it’s how it gets itself all through you-- but you know, we can use Quen to fix blood vessels too, so I know what to look for, there.”

“You can?” Keira turned to face him more directly. “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” Aiden said. “You can use it to stop bleeding. It's more like-- sealing them off, than really fixing them, but that's usually what you need. That’s what I did for you first. It’s a little tricky and you have to practice, and it doesn’t work on like, entirely-internal bleeding, but it works anywhere your blood vessels are, ah, exposed to the outside. Because it’s a shield that goes on the outside of you.”

“I,” Keira said, flabbergasted, and turned to Lambert, who had been letting himself just rub the washcloth across her midsection gently until all the blood was gone, and then sort of just-- keep rubbing just to feel her physical presence. “Lambert! You never told me that! That’s so-- why didn’t you tell me that?”

He looked up at her, which put his face pretty neatly in her breasts. It was incredibly distracting, and he wasn’t actually sure whether she wanted him to look at them or not-- if she was wearing something low-cut, that meant she did, but she was naked for practical reasons, so it was hard to tell if he was supposed to notice them or not. 

She was too caught-up in her excitement about _Quen_ to notice his awkward hesitation. “Didn’t occur to me,” he said, honestly, because he didn’t really give that very much thought; it took concentration to do, but he’d been doing it so long as a matter of course that it wasn’t like he lay awake thinking about it, of a night. 

“So that’s,” she said, clearly working it out in her mind. Her gaze went to middle distance, then sharpened on Aiden. “So that’s the level of control you have of _all_ your Signs.”

“Generally,” Aiden said, and picked up the washcloth again. He wrung it out and grimaced at the blood in the water. “How long we gonna sit here and stew in this?”

“You’re not even clean yet,” Lambert pointed out. “You haven’t washed your hair!”

“My hair’s fine,” Aiden said, frowning at him.

“It’s got blood in it,” Lambert said, “and I don’t even think it’s _your_ blood!”

Aiden grumbled at him, but then sank under the water, bubbling as he mumbled to himself for effect. Grudgingly, he scrubbed his hands through his hair under the water.

Keira blinked at him, then looked at Lambert, who still had his face more or less in her breasts. Her expression shifted as she noticed; she quirked her eyebrows, and Lambert felt some hope, but then her face shuttered, though not fast enough to hide a fleeting instant of desperate wistfulness.

“Keira,” Lambert said. 

She gathered herself, but couldn’t meet his eyes. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m all right.” She glanced over at Aiden, who was hanging motionless below the water like a waterlogged half a drowner corpse. “Er, is he all right?”

“I think he’s giving us privacy,” Lambert said. “You remember how long I can hold my breath?”

“He nearly died, though, just now,” she said.

Lambert shook his head. “He’s fine. Listen, is it that you don’t think I could love you both? Because I can. I do.”

“It’s,” she said, and then paused. “What?”

Aiden surfaced gingerly, peered at Lambert from behind the streaming curtain of his short but flattened hair, picked up something from Lambert’s expression that made him grimace in chagrin, and submerged himself again. 

“Lambert,” Keira said, face set in an expression of pain and… resignation, that was it. “It’s not-- that’s not--”

Lambert stood up so he was more on a level with her and not staring determinedly past her breasts. “I do,” he said. “Listen, I _used_ my _words_ on you, okay, like everybody says is supposed to work, and it didn’t, you got all weird on me, and I thought that was a pretty good sign that using your words is a bunch of bullshit but Aiden says I gotta try again, and I wouldn’t bother but this is real important. _You’re_ real important. I’m not going to watch you turn around and walk away because you think you have to, for some reason.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. 

“I told you I don’t fuck people I don’t care about,” Lambert said. Somehow, in the midst of all this, he was aware that Aiden had very, very quietly surfaced and was lurking just out of Keira’s line of sight giving him an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

“You told me you’d only ever cared about one person,” she countered.

Lambert stared at her. She’d taken it that way? How? “Before,” he said. He took a deep breath so that he didn’t roll his eyes. “And then I cared about you,” he went on, very carefully, “so I fucked you. And vice-versa. And so on. I didn’t realize I had to tell you that part, but I am now.”

Her eyes brimmed with tears, which honestly could go either way, but then she shook her head, and said, “That’s not--” for some reason, and he very carefully put his hands on her upper arms and held onto her, pulling her gently closer to him. 

“No,” he said, “it is. Keira! What part of that isn’t? I told you I don’t fuck people I don’t care about, and we fucked, and the conclusion there?”

“You don’t love me,” she said, scornful, and the tears spilled over. “Nobody does! Nobody ever has! Why would you? That doesn’t even make sense!”

“Why the fuck not?” Lambert demanded. “Why wouldn’t I? After everything you’ve done and all the things you told me and all the things I told you and-- and all the fun we had-- what? You think I’m going to play around?”

“I’m not a good person,” Keira said. She was crying now. “I’m not-- I don’t have the capacity for that sort of thing, Lambert, I can’t!” 

“You _do_ ,” he said. “You know you do. You went to all that trouble, you nearly got yourself killed all those times, and then fuck, you _did_ just about get killed today, and all for what? For a guy you think I’m gonna _replace_ you with? Why would you do that, Keira?”

She sobbed. “I don’t know,” she said, clearly trying to sound dismissive despite being in the midst of crying. “It’s not-- I can’t explain it. You wouldn’t understand it. It’s not--”

“Bullshit,” Lambert said, gently, holding her so she couldn’t turn her face haughtily away like she was halfheartedly trying to. He shook his head slowly, staring down into her face until she looked up at him. “Bullshit, Keira. You care about me. I care about you. Whatever justification you’ve come up with, whatever reason you think you have-- that’s what it really is. You care about me, you care about Aiden, you care about us. Stop trying to protect yourself by pulling away because it’s too late for that now.”

She took a shaky breath and let it out, staring up at him with wide eyes. There was still a little bit of dried blood on her face in front of her ear, a smudge that hadn’t come off yet. He let go of her arm on that side and dipped his hand in the water and raised it to wipe at the smudge with a wet thumb, gently, until it came off, and Keira stood still to let him, closing her eyes. He wiped away the tears on her face, while he was touching her. 

“Stay with me,” Lambert said. “Stay with us. We’ll work something out.”

“I,” Keira said, unsteadily. He pulled her into an embrace, tucking her head against his shoulder, and she didn’t resist at all, so he pulled her even closer and sat back down into the water, cradling her body against his. 

Aiden had squashed himself into the corner so as not to remind them of his presence. With Keira’s head tucked against his shoulder, Lambert could make eye contact. Aiden nodded emphatically at him, and he rolled his eyes, but smiled: the fact that Keira hadn’t run away meant he was way ahead of anywhere he’d ever managed to get with her before. 

Aiden took the washcloth, wrung it out, and draped it over the top of his head again, hunched so tightly in the corner his knees almost broke the surface of the water, and gave Lambert an almost demonic grin.

“I don’t know what kind of arrangements we gotta make,” Lambert said. Keira wasn’t-- exactly crying but she wasn’t not crying either, but she was semi-floating and hanging onto him and it felt really good to hold her, weightlessly, in the hot water, and let her breathe against his neck. “Maybe you’re the jealous type and that’s the problem and we gotta work that out. I don’t know. I’d say I’m not the kind of person shit ever works out for, but you brought Aiden back from the dead for me so I have to face that that’s just not true. I’m a person who gets to have things, because of you.”

Aiden’s face sort of crumpled and he managed to keep from making a sound, but he was clearly reacting to the last two sentences. Lambert tilted his head at him and smiled tightly. Keira sat up and wiped her face, looking up into his face, and she was wearing the kind of small sad smile Lambert was getting really sick of her wearing. 

“I can only warp Destiny so much,” she said. “Geralt warped mine, keeping me from getting killed by Radovid, and maybe that was really what Destiny wanted-- that I should save Aiden, maybe, or maybe this, that I’ve exposed Philippa’s treachery and kept Cirilla from trusting her? I don’t know, Lambert, but it’s still not a good sign for my continued survival. What now? What’ll happen to me now?”

“I know this one,” Aiden said unexpectedly. 

Both Lambert and Keira looked over at Aiden in surprise; Lambert rather thought Keira had forgotten he was there, which had certainly been Aiden’s intent. But he pulled the washcloth off his head again and sat up straighter, looking serious and sort of weirdly earnest. 

“What do _you_ know about Destiny?” Lambert asked, and it came out a little more accusing than he’d strictly intended. Aiden joked about it a lot but he hadn’t ever thought the man was particularly devout about it.

“I know a lot,” Aiden said, and it was sometimes hard to read his expression with that fake eye, it made him squint more than had been his wont, but he looked a little defensive now, or maybe determined. “So listen, right, Keira? You had a plan to go to Radovid, and then he was going to kill you, and Geralt talked you out of it, so you figure that’s you cheating death, right?”

“Yes,” she said. 

“So Geralt saved your life. And what did you do with it? You went to Kaer Morhen, you helped Ciri, you saved Lambert.”

“He might not have died without me,” Keira said, but she looked doubtful. Lambert grimaced, raised his hand out of the water to make a tippy either-or kind of gesture. The Wild Hunt had definitely had him pretty cornered and if she hadn’t saved him, maybe Geralt would have but maybe not. Aiden nodded at that. 

“My point is, you think maybe Destiny spared you to save Lambert and then didn’t need you anymore,” Aiden said. “So you figure Destiny came to collect, and that was why Philippa got to kill you?”

“More or less,” Keira said. 

“But that didn’t work either,” Aiden said. “I saved you. So you wanna know what I think?”

“What?” Keira said, flat and unconvinced. 

“You invested yourself wisely,” Aiden said. “What you did, you let Lambert in, you cared about him, you invested in him. You learned about him, you figured out how to give him a new kind of Sign, right, so he could save himself better.”

“Yeah,” Lambert said, warming to this.

“So you did that, and then you also invested yourself enough into him that you found out about me, and you went and invested yourself in me, and then invested yourself in fixing me.” Aiden was getting more emphatic, but he was being really good about not looming, which was something Lambert used to have trouble with from him. He was very carefully keeping his butt planted on the bench, and his gestures were mostly underwater. 

“All right,” Keira said slowly, clearly wondering what his rhetorical destination was.

“Meanwhile,” Aiden said, “Lambert took what you’d invested in him, and applied it to me. Now I know this new Sign and can use it to help myself.”

“Yes,” Keira said patiently.

“So then when Philippa tried to cash in on your Destiny,” Aiden finished, triumphant, “I had the tool I needed to save you. Because you’d invested yourself in Lambert, and in me, I had that to give back to you. So you’ve saved him, you’ve saved me, and now I’ve saved you in return. I think it’s all even and I think that’s what Destiny really wanted.”

“That’s insane,” Lambert said admiringly. “I love it.”

“It’s true!” Aiden said. “It is!”

Keira was staring at him, but Lambert couldn’t tell if she was skeptical or convinced or what. He jiggled his leg, jostling her lightly. “Well?” he said. 

She sighed and looked up at him. “Lambert,” she said.

“Keira,” he said, mimicking her tone. 

“Listen,” Aiden said, quiet and still earnest. “If it’s that you can’t-- with him, and me, and it’s-- we can work something out. We can make this work for all of us. I don’t have to-- always be in the bath with you, you know?”

“You’re just trying to get out of bathing,” Lambert said.

“Listen,” Aiden said again, and stood up, sloshing them as he leaned away as if to get out of the tub. “It’s not that I don’t love you but listen I have open cuts here, I really don’t need to marinate in this, kind of, _tea_ you’ve steeped with your buttholes. I’m going to go rinse myself off with a bucket like a civilized person.”

Keira laughed, which was a beautiful sound. “The water circulates,” she said, and gestured, showing the direction it was flowing. “It comes in that grate, and goes out that one. We’re not _steeping butthole tea_ in here.” She was laughing almost too hard to get the offending phrase out.

“I’m sure your butthole is at all times impeccable, madam,” Aiden said, stepping out of the tub and holding onto the edge of it to bow slightly, “but I know far too much about Lambert’s to be comfortable attempting any kind of hygiene in that kind of proximity.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my butthole,” Lambert protested.

“I never said anything was wrong with it, as a butthole,” Aiden said, wrapping himself in one of the towels neatly stacked by the tub. “I love your butthole, as buttholes go. But it’s not something I want to rub onto my open wounds.”

“The water circulates,” Keira said again, now laughing quite hard. “It’s clean, Aiden!”

“I don’t trust it,” Aiden said. 

“Anyway I thought you lot couldn’t get infections,” Keira said. 

“It’s not a question of infections,” Aiden said, “and for the record, yes we can, it’s just got to be really determined.” 

“Oh!” Keira said, and sloshed out of Lambert’s lap, which wasn’t what he’d wanted at all. “I have salve-- did you use enough soap? I didn’t realize how torn-up you still are, I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” Aiden said, “I have my own salve. Please, stay on Lambert’s lap, I don’t want him to cry.”

“Hey,” Lambert said sharply, reflexively defending himself against any accusations of undue emotion.

Keira turned back to him, waist-deep in the water with her hair falling wet around her face and no illusions on. She’d washed all the cosmetics off her face, and she was just herself. “Hey,” she said, softer. 

Lambert blinked up at her. “Hey,” he said, a little wonderingly. She came and bent down, taking his face between her hands, and kissed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All credit goes to [toffeecape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toffeecape/pseuds/toffeecape) for coining the phrase “butthole tea” in a Discord groupchat about (not primarily, but these things come up) inadvisable medical practices. (If you have an open wound, _please_ take a shower and _not_ a bath.)


	10. Chapter 10

Keira let herself really get lost in kissing Lambert for a few minutes at least, buoyed by the warm water and drifting in the wonderful slick familiar sensation of his mouth, but she was a grown-up and knew there were still things to figure out, and also Lambert was right and fucking in the bath was not a good idea.

Also she wasn’t… entirely… well, she was _mostly_ healed, but her insides hadn’t forgotten about their disarrangement. She wasn’t about to let herself get carried away, here. 

And there was a part of her that was _keenly_ aware that, not very far away at all, Aiden was trying very hard not to hiss as he put some extremely-too-astringent salve onto his still-open, still in some cases _bleeding_ cuts, and he was an idiot and was going to retard his own healing. 

She pulled back and blinked at Lambert for a moment, and then said, “Your husband is an idiot.”

“My,” Lambert said blankly, and then glanced over at Aiden, who blinked up at them. “Husband,” he said.

Aiden laughed. “Like Witchers get that kind of title,” he said, but he looked pleased. “What?”

“You’re an idiot,” Keira said.

“Come on,” Aiden said, gesturing, his face the very picture of wounded indignation, “I’m the one who explained this all to Lambert!”

“Not about that,” Keira said. Oh, yes, she should probably thank him. “Thank you for that, by the way. No, I meant the salve. That’s _absolutely_ the wrong thing to be using, I can smell it from here.” She sighed, and disentangled herself gently from Lambert, tracing her fingers along his lovely jawline because surely she was allowed to do that. Was she? But he leaned into it a bit, so, surely. She climbed out of the pool and picked up a towel and wrapped herself in it. “Ugh, you’re getting blood all over-- well. It’s fine. Stop that.” She grabbed his hand and prevented him from smearing waxy salve over the top of a still-bleeding wound. 

“I know how to--” Aiden protested. 

“Aiden,” she said, and looked up into his face. “Please let me help you.”

“It’s fine,” he said, more mildly. 

“But it could be better,” she said. “There’s no call to be making do with whatever salve you happened to have in your pocket, when I have an entire apothecary in the next room.” She gently took the little pot of salve out of his hand and looked at it. A quick sniff told her it was mostly beeswax with some rendered lard mixed in, and it had an astringent in it but was likely not human-safe. She had a sudden horrible certainty that Aiden used this for everything from chapped lips to burns to lube, and it was awful to contemplate.

“No,” she said again, and vanished the jar to a back shelf of her workshop. She’d put something more suitable in it and give it back later. In the meantime, she used a quick charm to clean his wounds of the salve, another to stop the bleeding, and then she conjured a small collection of dressings and bandages and set about affixing them manually.

“I,” Aiden said, “what did you--” 

“I would numb them,” she said, “but I’m afraid I still don’t entirely understand Witchers’ pain responses and I’m concerned my attempt would only cause distress. So it’s probably for the best to let these heal naturally.”

Aiden’s torso was long and lean and approximately as heavily-scarred as Lambert’s, though a little fuzzier; he had the towel tucked neatly around his hips, and his belt and trousers seemed to have protected him fairly well, as all the scrapes and cuts were above where his belt had been. The shallower abrasions had closed on their own, and all the wounds showed far more than the few hours’ healing they should; it was good data, if she had the wit to record it, about the kind of healing Witchers could do even without potions. But she wasn’t in a state to appreciate it at the moment. She pressed the dressings carefully against the deeper cuts that were still open, that the cleaning had made bleed sluggishly, and then deftly wrapped his torso in a length of bandage to hold the dressings in place. 

He stood patiently, arms over his head to keep them out of her way, and then she took his left arm and gave it a critical once-over. He had a few defensive wounds on that arm, and she could understand his earlier statement that he’d rather have gauntlets than anything else; he clearly relied on using his forearms to parry. These wounds likewise showed more signs of healing than the elapsed time should have allowed for, but most of them still bled sluggishly.

“I would stitch this,” she said, gingerly pressing the edges of a wound along the outer edge of his forearm together, but unsurprisingly he shook his head.

“Already closing, there,” he said, pointing out how the scar tissue was beginning to form at the ends of the wound. “Doesn’t need to be pulled together.” 

He hadn’t salved the wounds in his arms yet, so she didn’t have to clean that off. She used another little charm to make sure they were truly clean, and then bandaged both arms.

Lambert had hauled himself out of the water and was wrapped in his beautiful robe, standing at her elbow and watching her work. “Will it scar, doctor?” he asked, mock-serious, when she turned her head a little to acknowledge him.

“No, ma’am,” she said, smiling slightly, “your husband’s beauty will be no more marred than it already is.”

Lambert’s gaze went funny and indirect; he really liked the word _husband_ , but obviously would never have thought to use it for himself. A quick glance at Aiden confirmed he’d gone very slightly pink in the cheeks and was studiously looking away; he liked it too and was trying not to let on. She laughed at them, though she was a bit startled to realize how _fond_ the sound was when it came out. 

“You two are precious,” she said. “Here, Aiden, I got you a robe, put that on and let’s go back to the real world.”

The robe was yet another expensive left-over of Keira’s former court life, something she’d stashed away ages ago meaning to remake into a skirt or gown-- a sleeveless, unstructured thing that was meant to be belted over a dress. She’d stashed a great deal of that sort of thing into a trunk and tucked it away, and it was proving invaluable now. This one was dark blue velvet, liberally studded with exquisitely-worked embroidery in brilliant yellows and magentas, picking out the shapes of flowers with their centers filled in with tiny oval mirrors held in place by the stitches. 

The dark blue suited Aiden’s coloring beautifully, showcasing his lovely bare arms, which also was handy to keep the bandaged areas free. The embroidery was a bit busy, and kept sparkling distractingly. And the cut wasn’t ideal; on Keira, it was loose and draped, but Aiden filled out the square line of the meant-to-be-oversized shoulder seams to the point that there was very little extra fabric. There was enough overlap that with one of her silk scarves as a sash, it didn’t gap open, but it wasn’t the most generous coverage. It did extend most of the way down his thighs, at least, so it served the purpose, but he’d be better-off with something less gaudy and more… long. 

“This,” Aiden said, mostly to himself, “is maybe the fanciest thing I’ve ever put on my body.” He glanced over at Lambert. “You, it looks okay on, but I think this is a bit rich for my blood.”

“We can’t all be decorative,” Lambert said, preening a little. 

Keira rather thought it suited Aiden, in some of its details anyway. He really was very pretty. She wasn’t sure how he’d take it if she said that, though. Really she wasn’t sure about any of this, but it seemed pointless to resist. Lambert clearly had a plan, and perhaps it would work and perhaps it wouldn’t, but it involved her and she was too worn-down and desperate anymore to turn away any plan that involved her.

This time Aiden didn’t balk at the portal, and it occurred to her that possibly his earlier hesitation had been manipulative, to distract her. He and Lambert worked so well together and so smoothly-- was she a beast they’d hunted? Was this-- 

She stopped the track of her thoughts and followed Aiden’s unhesitating slouch through the portal, and calmly shut the portal off once she was through. Lambert was fiddling with the lapel of Aiden’s robe, and Aiden was making a skeptical face at him. They both turned to look at her, and each of them, independently, made the same uncertain, hopeful smile at her. 

It was hard to read that as hostile. 

* * *

Aiden dithered mentally with himself as Keira and Lambert cleaned up in the kitchen and readied themselves for bed with the ease of long familiarity. They had lived together in this house for months, and had inside jokes, and-- it was surpassingly odd to see Lambert like this, unarmored and happy with someone else. Normally Lambert was prickly and sarcastic to strangers, and only opened like this for Aiden-- presumably he wasn’t so prickly to his brothers, but Aiden hadn’t seen that interaction except the one time recently and that had involved alcohol. This was Lambert, sober, soft and solicitous, to someone else. 

Aiden wasn’t jealous, he was delighted, but he was feeling a little-- well, he should leave them to their reunion. The whole scene had been rather muddled and he wasn’t sure what the final conclusion of all of it really was. In general, sure, they were both allowed to keep Lambert, but in specific, well, he wasn’t sure what any of it entailed. And he was so cold and so tired and felt so heavy all over, he just wanted to curl up in a ball somewhere safe until he felt better. He just didn’t have the energy to navigate anything else complicated tonight.

“I guess I’ll have to loan you more clothes,” Lambert said, and went through a door Aiden hadn’t been through before, of the three doors opening off the house’s main room. 

“How do you even _have_ more clothes,” Aiden marveled, following him through the door. This robe was lovely but he was not the sort of guy who could comfortably wander around in a short robe sans underwear for a prolonged period. Generally he preferred to be in a pair of trousers at all times, despite his bravado to Keira about boots and gauntlets. He wasn’t particularly physically modest, his upbringing and indeed entire life had seen to that, but he’d had to fight naked enough to know he never wanted that, and most of his life was a fight, and that kind of vulnerability wasn’t something he enjoyed. He’d prefer to be ready to fight. Especially since the rest of him was feeling so poorly; at least he could have _clothes_ on. And he was so cold.

“I don’t know,” Lambert said meditatively. The room was a moderately-sized bedchamber with trunks and boxes crammed against the walls, and several spare swords hanging neatly on pegs, and armor bits arranged over every otherwise-unused surface. 

Lambert paused, head tilted slightly back in the manner that always told Aiden his Wolf had picked up a scent. Aiden parted his lips to take it in more effectively, the only way he’d found to begin to keep up with Lambert. The room smelled of leather, metal, a hint of woodsmoke and mud, and-- Keira. 

Lambert looked over at the bed, which was neatly made, and then at Aiden, grim and sad. Keira herself was just coming over to the doorway, so he didn’t say anything, but Aiden understood-- this wasn’t Keira’s bedroom, none of her things were in it, but she’d been sleeping here. Probably Lambert could get more information from her scent, but Aiden, just at the edge of his ability, rather thought it smelled like Keira had spent a couple of nights in here being miserable; she had a lovely scent, sweet and light, but there was a distinctive sharp tang of distress in it as it lingered in this room. 

Lambert’s expression shaded slightly to angry, which was his default distressed expression, and went over to one of his myriad trunks to dig through it. “Here,” he said, and dug out a pair of braies. “I never wear these anyway, you can have them.”

Aiden took them; at least they were clean. “Got any socks?” he asked, partly to tease Lambert, but partly because his feet were so achingly cold. 

“You are the _worst_ ,” Lambert groaned in sheer reflex, but to Aiden’s surprise dug out a really nice pair of sewn socks, nice heavy wool ones with the shaped seam on the side. They’d probably even fit; Lambert’s feet were a bit smaller than his, but not as much as one would expect given the difference in their height.

“Shit,” Aiden said, “these are nice, I was kidding.”

Keira leaned in the doorway, and Lambert said, “Sometimes being a mage’s pet pays off,” and Aiden was startled into a laugh. Halmatia had put him in many different costumes over the years but she had never done anything for his comfort. 

“The box there has everything I hauled out of Halmatia’s basement,” Keira said quietly, gesturing at a wooden box with no lid. “I don’t know that any of it was yours. We already established that the armor wasn’t.” 

Aiden crouched to look in the box. “My potions bag,” he said, and pulled it out. Still had all his empty bottles in it, but none of the full ones. “She rifled through this pretty good.” If he could ever take potions again he’d be glad to have the bag back, at least.

“She… made some attempts to reverse-engineer your potions, I think,” Keira said, “but lacked the alchemical knowledge to do anything with them.”

Aiden rummaged briefly through the box, but he was far too tired and cold and headachey with blood loss to want to devote much attention to it. Nothing in the box looked particularly interesting. So instead he sat on the Keira-scented bed (oh, yes, she’d definitely cried herself to sleep in here, and he felt miserable thinking about how long it had taken them to talk this out at all) and put the socks onto his iceblock feet and watched Lambert dig through the trunk some more. 

Lambert found him a fairly plain but soft and well-mended shirt to wear, and found a pair of cute lacy underpants for himself, and Keira sat next to Aiden and watched Lambert change out of his robe and into the underthings and a nice sleeveless shift with a ribbon at the neckline. 

“I mean, I don’t think either of you is in the mood for much of a show tonight,” Lambert said, hand on hip, regarding them frankly. 

“No,” Keira said, “I, ah. I think I need a little more healing time,” and she had her hand over her midsection and looked uneasy. “If you two, uh,” and she gestured vaguely between the two of them.

Aiden laughed despite himself, and when they both looked at him, found himself having difficulty explaining. “Ehm,” he said. “I, ah.” He paused, considering. “Well, I lost a lot of blood today,” he said finally, knowing Lambert would know what he meant.

“Ah,” Lambert said, picking it up immediately. “Well, I’m not putting on a solo show. I think we can work out a reasonable sleeping arrangement.”

“If,” Keira said, a bit hesitantly. “Well, if you don’t--”

“I don’t think you should sleep alone, sweetheart,” Lambert said, coming over and putting a hand against her face. It was physically painful to look at her uncertain expression and smell the scent of her misery wafting up from this bed, and it had to be worse for Lambert. 

She set her jaw. “I’ll probably have night terrors,” she said resignedly. “It’s safer if--”

“If I’m there,” Lambert said. “If _we’re_ there.”

“I can,” she said, shaking her head slightly with a pained grimace, and Lambert climbed onto the bed, straddling her lap, and wrapped his arms around her, which effectively shut her up.

“No,” he said. “ _No_ , Keira.”

Aiden laughed softly. “I have a lot of them,” he said. “I don’t usually sleep a whole night through. We might as well stick together in it.”

She tilted her head back enough to turn her head and look at him, and it was hard to make out her expression, squashed as she was against Lambert’s chest. “Well,” she said. “The bed _is_ enormous.”

Lambert let go of her and sat back a little, stroking her hair and tilting his head to peer into her face. “You’re stuck with me now,” he said. “You don’t get to go be miserable and alone.”

“If anyone’s gonna make you miserable it’s gonna be Lambert,” Aiden put in, trying not to sound tentative about it. It was the kind of joke you had to commit to.

She laughed, and there were tears on her face, but she didn’t seem upset. “I guess not,” she said. She wiped her face, and Lambert climbed off her, and helped her to her feet, and then turned to Aiden and helped him stand up. 

Witchers didn’t get light-headed exactly, but Aiden could feel his pulse straining to compensate for the low volume of blood, and he wasn’t entirely putting it on when he leaned heavily on Lambert. “Hm,” Lambert said, steadying him with one very strong arm. “Better get some more fluids into you.”

“Oh,” Keira said, concerned. “I hadn’t realized-- I have a tonic for blood loss, do you think it would help? I could get it.”

“No,” Aiden said hastily, “no, just-- water will be plenty, I’ll drink more before I sleep. It’s fine.”

“It doesn’t look fine,” Keira said dubiously. “I’ll get it.”

Lambert took Aiden through the remaining door he hadn’t yet explored. It opened into a far larger space than he’d expected-- he didn’t need his medallion to tell him this was magic, somehow. A sorceress’s bedroom, of course, could hardly be expected to be mundane, but Aiden had never seen one like this before so he imagined he could be forgiven a bit of gawping.

(Halmatia’s bedroom was-- he’d blocked most of it out. Not like this, and that was plenty.)

There was a huge hearth along one wall, with a fire in it that looked recently-tended even though none of them had been here to do it. Along the other wall, heavy brocade curtains concealed something that was likely a window. At one end of the room stood an entirely incongruous grove of birch trees, with a mossy floor and a little stone bench and some faint starlight that wasn’t coming from the ceiling. And at the far end of the bed, on a slightly raised bit of floor, there was a nook with an enormous bedstead, hung with brocade curtains that matched the ones along the wall, with a richly-carved nightstand to one side of the bed and a heavily-padded, upholstered chair to the other. 

“Well,” Aiden said, after a moment. “I should have expected this.”

“Possibly,” Lambert said.

This room smelled more faintly of Keira, over the scents of the fire and the moss, and even yet more faintly of Lambert. No question they’d both slept in here, but neither for a little while. “And you,” Aiden said, “just, hopped right on up in that bed.”

“Yeah,” Lambert said. “Well, it’s been a really crazy couple of years, man.”

“You’re telling me,” Aiden said, and let Lambert pull him into that enormous room.

“How bad is it really?” Lambert asked, as Aiden sank down on the edge of the bed. 

Aiden shrugged. He’d only been meditating because his body had shut down, earlier. He wasn’t in a good way at all, and it was going to take him several days to regain his full measure of health if he didn’t take any potions or anything.

But, ideally, he’d have several days before he had to do anything extremely strenuous, so it wasn’t anything to worry about. “Was bad,” he said, looking up into Lambert’s face, “not so bad now.”

“If it was enough blood that you mention it,” Lambert said, fingers gentle along Aiden’s hairline. 

“Well,” Aiden said uncomfortably. “I don’t want any-- misunderstandings.”

Keira came in then, holding a jar under one arm, a pitcher in the other hand, and a cup. “Misunderstandings,” she said.

Aiden opened his mouth, and then closed it, finding that his ability to explain himself to this beautiful intimidating woman whose bed he was in had somewhat evaporated in the face of seeing her calmly, competently, measuring a dose of something into the cup and then topping it off with water and then handing it to him.

But either he found his words, or--

“Ha,” Lambert said, and Aiden covered his face with his hand in embarrassment because he knew Lambert wasn’t going to have any fucking tact about it. “Lost too much blood to get it up. Happens sometimes. Usually takes a day or two to recover from that kind of thing.”

“I was trying to be delicate about it,” Aiden said, rubbing the back of his neck with a grimace. “I’m just saying-- you want a show, I’ll give you a show, but you gotta-- you gotta be patient.”

She tilted her head slightly. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, face creasing in sympathy, which he hadn’t been prepared for _at all_. “I don’t need a show. I don’t need anything from you. Drink that up, it’s human-safe so I know it won’t set off your eye, and get a good sleep. I thought you’d died a couple of hours ago, I’m not exactly expecting--”

“I just,” Aiden said, flustered, “I know, I just don’t want anybody to think I don’t--”

She shook her head a little. “Aiden,” she said, smiling slightly. “Drink. Sleep. There’ll be time later to work everything out.”

He sniffed skeptically at the cup, and could pick out some of the ingredients just from that. It wasn’t anything that would poison him (not that there was much that could), so he took a swallow of it, rolling it around in his mouth a little to see if he could tell what else was in it. 

“What about you?” he asked. It was markedly unfair that he was so peakéd that everyone could tell just from a, well, from a series of moderate wounds and the loss of a significant amount of blood, when Keira who was human for the purposes of injury-recovery and had been _entirely impaled_ , with serious organ damage, should be wandering around looking softly lovely and yet somehow unnervingly competent.

She smiled, and raised one shoulder. “I will recover,” she said. “And I have already had as much of this stuff as my body can actually handle.”

Aiden considered that for a moment, then downed the rest of the cup. He’d caught a whiff of it on her, she wasn’t lying that she’d taken it herself, and he was too flat-out exhausted to care beyond that. Anything that might help. 

“Get in that bed,” Lambert said, flipping back the covers for him. It was an enormous bed. And Aiden’s body was so heavy. He crawled over to the farthest part of the bed and flopped over into it, feeling like he was perhaps being over-dramatic. But he let Lambert pull the blankets over him, and while his mind came up with the vague shapes of a witty retort, his mouth wouldn’t form it, and before he could focus on the effort, he’d fallen asleep.

* * *

“Is he,” Keira said, looking up from where she’d been hanging her bathrobe in the clothes press. Her eyes went a little unfocused. “He is,” she said.

Lambert was still sitting on the edge of the bed. Aiden’s face had gone slack almost instantly once Lambert had tucked him into bed like a little kid. He looked terrible, even after the food, even after the bath-- too pale, moving like his limbs were heavy, with that pinch between his eyebrows that meant he was hurting. He’d been putting a brave face on, but he was suffering. 

“Yeah,” Lambert said, “he’s out. He lost a _lot_ of blood. And I’ve done that before, and white-knuckling it out without any potions is real hard on the system.”

“I’m,” Keira said, looking guilty, and Lambert realized what he’d said. 

“No,” he interrupted her, “no, no, I’m not blaming you that he can’t take any potions! He’s not blaming you either. I just meant, he’s going down for a while, here.” He frowned. “And so should you.”

She was hesitating, he realized, reluctant, still holding herself back. She didn’t believe him, and the only reason she was still in the same room and hadn’t fled was that she was too tired, to beat-down, and had nowhere else to go. 

“Come here,” he said, and stood, taking her by the hands and tugging her over to the bed. She was in a short-sleeved shift, modest and feminine-- a costume, not how she’d choose to dress if no one was looking. 

She didn’t trust him. She didn’t believe in it. She was just too tired to resist. 

Lambert knew he wasn’t really any kind of saint, didn’t have the slightest bit more than his fair share of patience, and she’d surely tried his over these last couple of weeks. But he couldn’t be angry with her, any more than he’d been able to be angry at Aiden for getting snappish after days of constant unrelievable pain. And the solution was, possibly, the same. 

It was funny to think how little of his life had prepared him for this, Lambert thought, as he pulled her gently into his embrace and rolled her down into the bed, pulling up the blankets over them and nestling in so that he was just barely touching Aiden’s shoulder on one side, and had pulled Keira’s body in against his front so he was curled around her. None of his Witcher training had really taught him how to just-- hold on. It was an old instinct, a human one. 

“Just stay with me,” he said softly to her. He was going to have to say it a lot, he knew that, but if he could get her to hear him, just once, that might be enough. 

She shivered a few times, but he could feel the tension go out of her a little at a time, and she let him hold her tighter each time. She was curled facing away from him, and she had her hands pressed over her belly. He put his hand over them, and after a moment she took his hand and pressed it against herself, over where she’d been wounded, he realized. She shivered again and he could tell she was crying now. 

“You lived,” he murmured. “You made the tools to save yourself, baby. You earned your rescue with your own work. I’m here now, we’re here-- you’re not alone.”

She turned onto her back, and he kept his hand over that spot. “I can’t,” she sobbed quietly, “you can’t-- it’s not-- that’s not how it works,” but she cried and tucked herself into his shoulder, so he took it as at least not a defeat. 

“That is how it works,” he said, as she subsided. “And you can, Keira. You can. I can. We will. It can work like this.”

Her breath kept hitching but she didn’t cry anymore, and pretty soon after that he knew she was asleep. It wasn’t all that late, and Lambert hadn’t worked all that hard today, but he was exhausted too, so he let himself fall asleep, listening to Aiden’s slow breaths and Keira’s shallow ones. 


End file.
